Well, after seven weeks of one meeting per week plus two Saturday mornings, the Living Smart participants have gone home to... live smartly with fewer resources.

This is a course for people who want to adopt more sustainable lifestyles, and it extends the concept of sustainability to include personal health and wellbeing and community.

Over the duration of the course, we learned how to live smart in regard to:

• Power Smart — lowering our energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions
• Water Smart — making best use of water
• Waste Smart — producing less waste in our households
• Community Smart — how to multiple our individual efforts by cooperating with others in community organisations.

We also covered personal health, including diet (don't, unless it's a Mediterranean diet), personal care and non-toxic household cleaning products; Food Smart, about adopting a sustainable food supply; gardens for biodiversity, about the value of growing indigenous plants; and gardens for productivity, about growing some of our own food in home and community gardens.

Unlike other sustainability courses, this one is long enough to do the topic practical justice and uses weekly goal setting to help participants move towards what it is they want to do. A range of guest presenters assist with the topics and much use is made of participatory techniques and sharing of their own experience by participants.

The Living Smart course was developed by Murdoch University in Western Australia, City of Fremantle, Southern Metropolitan Regional Council and the Meeting Place Community Centre. In Sydney, it was organised by Randwick City Council.

This was the second trial of Living Smart in NSW. A third trial will take place later this year. The course is open to anyone and is particularly suited to people living in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. Participants in teh recent course receives a Living Smart Action Guide, a substantial manual that contains way more than is found in the course meetings, and upon completion they were awarded a certificate by the deputy mayor of Randwick.

More information:
Eastern Suburbs Community College— www.escc.nsw.edu.au
Randwick City Council Sustainability Education Officer — fiona.campbell@randwick.nsw.gov.au