First published by Port Environment Centre, Adelaide
The idea to have a CoolSeat at the Port Environment Centre first emerged at a Semaphore Compost Network meeting. The Semaphore Compost Network is a local community organisation that has been working for two decades to recover food and coffee ground waste from local food businesses. After Tim Walsh announced it at a Port Environment Forum, our generous community embraced the idea, co-funding this CoolSeat for the public to enjoy and use to compost their organics. A collective of funders including local sustainable café The Banksia Tree and individual community members contributed to the dream with the remaining amount topped up by a LandcareSA equipment grant.
The CoolSeat has recently been installed out the front of the Port Environment Centre fitting into an alcove in the building facade alongside our long-running community street garden, which is accessible to the public, who can help themselves to vegetables, herbs and native food plants. The CoolSeat is a perfect addition to our little garden, giving visitors somewhere to sit and enjoy the streetscape and compost their scraps once they have finished enjoying their lunch. To get the composting bay started we lined the baskets with hessian sacks, added a bit of mature compost to inoculate and started adding our food scraps.
The CoolSeat is an innovative and stylish design providing not only a nice spot to sit but also a wicking garden bed and a hidden composting bay. The entire bottom of the seat acts as a reservoir for the wicking bed providing water for the garden bed which will help keep the plants happy during our long summers in this very hot urban area. We filled the garden bed with a mixture of potting mix and homemade compost supplied by the Semaphore Compost Network and immediately got to work planting. The garden section has been filled with lettuce, radishes, tomatoes, strawberries, and blackberries which are thriving in their new home and will make nice additions for lunch when we take some time out the front to dine on the new CoolSeat.
The new CoolSeat is cool to us for so many reasons, but I think this story is most special because of the way it brought the community together to purchase the seat collectively. We are so proud to be hosting this beautiful community asset. There has been so much excitement from supporters coming along to check it out since it arrived and we hope that excitement continues as new passersby discover the secrets of the bench seat and stop and take time to enjoy the area. One of our wonderful volunteers added some comfy and colourful cushions to draw people in and put up a sign with more info. Stop by PEC sometime, say hello and check it out!
