Health and the Environment - Australian Conservation Foundation

Health and the environmentExample 4: The Sunnyside solar projectSunnyside is a suburb of Perth which prides itself on its many days of sunlight per year.The local council teams with school authorities and with a solar energy firm to obtain a grantfrom EcoHealth which involves young children and their parents in studies of the positiveand negative effects of solar energy. The project includes local incentives to install solarhome systems at the same time as it reinforces the message of skin and eye damage fromUV radiation. An educational component on the need to develop alternatives to fossil-fuelcombustion (with its side products of air pollution, acid rain and greenhouse gases) enablesthe project to meet the requirement to demonstrate links to the questions of long-termsustainability. Indicators of the success of the project could include the uptake of solar energygeneration in the community together with evidence of increased community promotion ofprotection from exposure to the sun.page33Example 5: The Sadtown recycling projectSadtown is a town of 5000 in rural Queensland going through the throes of withdrawal ofits coal mine, and the structural readjustment which that has meant for the town. Depressionand suicide are the growing concern of the church and town leaders, and local businesses areleaving the town for the city. The council seeks a grant from EcoHealth to develop a recyclingplant for the town’s refuse, as the local landfill is becoming an eyesore and also reaching itscapacity. The recycling plant is developed as a commercial business that employs five formerminers and five unemployed young people in paper, aluminium and glass recycling, but isexpected to run at a loss for its first five years. The EcoHealth Program project is developedin collaboration with the local primary school as an illustration of the uses to which recycledrefuse can be put. It actively seeks to re-establish the town’s social support mechanisms andinvolvement in the corporate life of the township’s recycling business. It enlists the localdoctor in the project who undertakes to work with the council on a suicide prevention project.The recycling project becomes a focal point for renewal of the town’s social capital. Itssuccess is measured not only by the focus on recycling that it induces but on the psychologicalhealth and wellbeing of the community.