BSFG President, John Lloyd, attended the monthly meeting of the North East Regional Sustainability Alliance (NERSA) earlier this week. 

NERSA is a network of community sustainability groups in the North East - Albury/Wodonga; Yack Sustainability; Beechworth Urban Landcare and Sustainability (BULS); Wangaratta Sustainability Network (WSN) and Benalla Sustainable Future Group.  NERSA acts collaboratively with communities, agencies and organisations across the region to:

‘promote sustainability across North East Victoria by acting as a hub for coordination and collaboration between community groups and others with focus on sustainability in our region and nationally.’

The Ecoportal is a wonderful source of information about sustainability groups, events and conversations in North East Victoria.  The Ecoportal's 'Living Lightly' articles, published in a regular column in the Border Mail, are always well worth reading when seeking ideas to help to reduce environmental footprints. 

You can find links to Nersa and the Ecoportal on the 'Links' page & drop down menu.

BSFG members recently attended a Sustainability Victoria Climate Change Community Conversation meeting held in Benalla on 13 November.
This is a new pilot platform to promote collaboration and the informal exchange of knowledge, resources and learnings between groups and individuals involved in climate change action across Victoria.
Thirty people attended the event and you can click on the links to find the Benalla event summary and the butcher’s paper notes. 
This Climate Change Conversation Summaries link documents information about what Sustainability Actions communities are doing in Victoria.

The N-E Waste and Resource Recovery Group is seeking input from community members about the development of a Waste and Resource Recovery Implementation Plan for the north-east region. 

Due to be completed by June 2016, our regional development plan will set out the waste and resource recovery infrastructure needs of the north east region over a 10 year period, whilst minimising environmental and public health impacts and where possible reducing costs to the community. It will look at: maximising opportunities to share resources with neighbouring councils and regions, identify opportunities to minimise costs and encourage innovation and job creation. Consultation with local government, industry and the community is currently underway.

At our general meeting this week, BSFG members raised the need for a centralized recovery point in Benalla, especially for batteries.  Currently Benalla residents need to drive to another regional town to dispose of batteries. 

Community members can register their interest and have our say by completing a short survey.  While it took me a little more than the three to minutes suggested to digest the questions and think through my responses, I found it interesting and a hopefully very worth while exercise in community participation.   Click  here or the link below by December 18th to have your say! 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/onlineimplementationplansurvey

After our December general meeting on December 10 we watched Strathbogie Voices video "Little Talks to Big".  The video shows how people in small communities can contribute to positive action on Climate Change.  The video was taken by Kate Auty to the COP21 Climate Conference in Paris to show how a small Victorian town can have a say in.  Comments from BSFG member Cath Marriott are included in the video.  It's available on YouTube and we've added it here for anyone who didn't get to the general meeting to check out.

We also screened a slide show prepared by Peter of photos/video taken of the Melbourne People’s Climate March on Friday the 27th of November.  Photos of our BSFG contingent are currently in the slide show on the home page and will soon be available on a Gallery page.  There is a powerful collection of photographs of Melbourne's historic march at People's Climate March - Melbourne, November 27 2015.  A huge selection of photographs can also be found by searching Google Images - People's Climate March, Melbourne.