Hello, Warimi, and welcome to our July newsletter.
First up, a big thanks to all of our members who have renewed for the 2024-25 financial year. If you’re not yet a member please consider becoming one!
What’s been happening
We’ve published a short article on our website about the 136 electric vehicle chargers that are being rolled out in the Inner West over the next year. Inner West Council is currently consulting on the locations, with five new on-street chargers proposed for Holmwood St and Alice St. We’ll be preparing a submission so please let us know if there are any locations you particularly like or dislike, or if there are locations you’d like to see included that haven’t made the list. You can also provide your own feedback until 11 August.
It was great to see this article in the Guardian about an Inner West mum experimenting with an e-bike for her 8km commute to work in the CBD via daycare. E-bikes are a zero (or almost zero) emissions transport solution that are much cheaper and take up much less road space than EVs, and it’s great to see more and more families using e-bikes to get around our local area. We hope to see this trend accelerate, and will keep advocating for safer and better connected bike infrastructure to make this possible.
Upcoming events and activities
This Thursday Craig Reucassel is hosting an event called the Big Carbon Rethink as part of UTS’s Global Game Changers series. It’s a free event exploring new and innovative climate solutions and imagining a world in which the products we’re surrounded with are all part of the solution to climate change, instead of part of the problem. Tickets available here.
Also on Thursday, the Newtown Enmore Business Community is hosting a networking event at Young Henrys. This is an opportunity to meet people involved in local businesses, many of whom are also working to reduce climate pollution and to make Newtown a better place to live, work and play.
Local government elections will be held on Saturday 14 September – that’s six weeks away. We’re planning to reach out to candidates with a few climate-related questions and publish their responses on our website. We’d also love to host a drinks event with candidates, but need some more help to make this happen – please let us know if you would like to help out!
Some of our neighbouring community groups will be hosting a candidates forum for City of Sydney Lord Mayoral candidates on Wednesday 21 August. This is a great opportunity to ask candidates to support policies that will bring down emissions in our local area, and make it easier for residents to live low-emissions lives. Click here for details and to submit your questions.
Stay tuned for details of our 2024 AGM. We’d love to make this a social event at a local business that supports climate action, so if you have any ideas for a good venue just let us know!
Photo of the month
Four of our current committee members Amanda, Mamoon, Eddy and Grace met up at Ariana’s Place on King St for our final committee meeting before our 2024 AGM. A huge thanks to our seven committee members who have kept Newtown Climate ticking over for the past twelve months. If you’re interested in getting more involved with local climate action over the next year then please consider joining our committee!
For more photos of cool climate-related things in and around Newtown be sure to follow our Instagram!
Membership news
Our membership year ended on 30 June, with new memberships from 1 January 2024 rolling over into the new financial year.
If you aren’t yet a member of Newtown Climate and would like to support us please consider signing up. Existing members can use the same form to renew their membership for 2024-25.
Memberships start at $5 and for a local community group like ours, every member – and every membership fee – really does count.
More opportunities to get involved
We have plenty of ideas that we can take forward when we have a few more volunteers to help us out. If that’s you please send us an email, come along to one of our Sunday morning coffee meetings (see below) or join our Whatsapp group. We love working with locals to take forward their ideas for local climate action, so if you see any good opportunities to accelerate local decarbonisation just let us know!
We mainly communicate through a WhatsApp group. Reply to this email if you’d like to be added to it. We also meet most Sunday mornings at Ariana’s Place on King Street. All welcome, but please email us (or message the WhatsApp group) in advance to make sure we’ll be there!
And as ever, a reminder that our website has a bunch of handy guides, articles and links that you might want to read or share with your friends. Let us know if you come across any excellent resources that you think we should add, or if there are questions you’d like us to answer.
That’s all for now! So, Yanu in Dharug language. Stay warm!