Challenge takes off as groups of neighbours in Newcastle work together to save water and live greener

Two young girls climb into a bathtub and start stomping on clothes lying in the warm water. It might look like great fun, but there’s also a serious message coming up in the wash.

Water is an immensely valuable resource, believes 15-year-old Jasmine Stuart and her sister, Alexa, 13, and an exercise in using a limited amount of water to wash in, then to clean clothes, and finally to flush toilets, has proved an excellent lesson. 

“We turned off all the taps for a day and lived on one ten-litre bucket of water per person,” Jasmine says. “It made us realise how much water we waste a day.”

This challenge was first issued in the UK and now being undertaken in neighbourhoods throughout Australia. It’s part of a scheme called Transition Streets, and it involves groups of neighbours getting together to work out how they can live more sustainably. 

The project is being adopted in a number of streets in Newcastle, NSW, in Melbourne’s Banyule council area, and in Fremantle, WA, with neighbours in some streets in Canberra now planning to join in too.

“It comes from that idea of Gandhi’s, ‘Be the change that you wish to see in the world’,” says Jasmine’s dad, Dr Graeme Stuart, 55, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle’s Family Action Centre. 

“Transition Streets does two things. Firstly, it really brings neighbours together to help build relationships and communities, and secondly it gets people thinking about sustainability and how they can live more sustainably. They can achieve so much more together than they can alone, and being part of a community like that really motivates people to keep on making a difference.”

The idea first began in Totnes, Devon, in the south of England, where groups of neighbours got together every few weeks in response to concern over diminishing fossil fuel supplies and climate change. They decided to try to make easy changes together in how they used energy, water, food, packaging and transport. 

In Australia, Dr Stuart’s neighbourhood group rewrote their call to action workbook to be more relevant to the climate – with ideas on how to save water and energy, and live in a greener, cleaner way – and word soon spread to ten other streets in the city. 

Many started planting vegetables on street verges, digging their own backyard vegetable gardens, sharing lawnmowers, recycling as much as they could and cutting down on their water and electricity consumption. Others used bikes or public transport more and their cars less, shopped at farmers’ markets, cut down on their use of plastic bags, held street garage sales and communal cooking afternoons and involved their kids in the movement too.

“The big success is that you become so much more conscious of what you’re doing, and learn to change your habits for the better,” says Dr Stuart. “People feel inspired to do more and try new things, and at the same time people have really appreciated how it’s been bringing neighbours together with a much greater sense of neighbourhood with babysitting, film nights and, it seems, a lot of happy people.”

Retired carer Virginia Hanlon, 63, lives in another street in Newcastle which is also an enthusiastic member of Transition Streets. Hers, in a comparatively wealthy neighbourhood, has come up with even more ambitious ideas, like buying an electric car together to share, with a charger in the street.

“We’ve done a lot together,” says Hanlon. “People have replaced old fridges and washing machines for more energy-efficient models, someone installed a solar-powered ioniser in his pool to save on the energy used by pool pumps, we’ve changed showerheads and we all recycle more. 

“A lot of people have changed their behaviour. And we’ve ended up with a different kind of relationship as neighbours. People might once have got together over wine and biscuits to chat but now we’re having much deeper conversations about saving the planet!”

The movement, which has also expanded to the US, France, Belgium, Italy and Sweden as part of the global Transition Network organisation, is spreading steadily by osmosis here, too. When full-time mum Jeena York, 44, moved from her Transition Street in Newcastle to Lake Macquarie, she brought the ideas of the movement with her, recycling and re-using, growing vegetables in her front garden and keeping chickens.

“Passers-by all stop to chat and I’m now sharing vegetables and eggs with the neighbours,” she says. “I haven’t been here long, but it would be good to set up a Transition Street here too.”

In Melbourne’s Banyule local government area, which encompasses 17 suburbs along the Yarra River from Ivanhoe to Greensborough, there’ve also been a number of Transition Streets set up. Retired maths teacher and community worker Mary Stringer, 74, says they’ve been great successes.

“We’ve had people setting up a Facebook page about swopping goods and services online, a group setting up home-brewing so they avoid packaging and travelling for entertainment, cutting down on energy and water usage and everyone turning off electrical switches at the wall to save power,” she says. 

“It’s so much easier to lead a more sustainable life when you have the support of neighbours around you. It’s a great movement and we have more new groups now planning to set up next year. I highly recommend it!”