Ipswich is once again celebrating Sustainable Ipswich Week, August 19-25. The seven-day event focuses on raising awareness about the environment we live in and its problems, igniting discussions that emphasise community solutions and understanding individual impacts.

Ipswich City Council has created a community website that covers sustainability tips, accessing educational resources, being a partner in an event or calculating your daily carbon footprint.
The website also offers a list of events that will be held throughout Sustainable Ipswich Week including; night walks, film screenings of 2040 with a talk from producer Damon Gameau, an Enviro forum, youth sustainability summit, Enviro Awards, tree planting and composting workshops.

Each day of the week even has its own theme: Money Saving Monday, Nude Food Tuesday, Zero Waste Wednesday, Buy Local Thursday and Carbon Footprint Friday.
Each is designed to provide an insight into a cleaner way of living, and to carry the ideas and lessons learned into every day life.

Learning to care for the environment though Sustainable Ipswich Week is particularly pertinent to Ipswich, which is home to a hugely diverse range of natural vegetation including rainforest, dry vine forest, soft wood forest, open forests, woodlands, heathlands, wetlands and grasslands and the Bremer River, all of which house over 2000 species of native plants and animals, including rare and threatened species.

The Bremer River, which winds through the Scenic Rim into Ipswich and flows into the Brisbane River, has been under scrutiny by council and health regulation authorities for its high levels of pollution since 1973. From 2006-2012 the Bremer River received an F in water quality the lowest possible grading.
Contributing to this is the run off from logging activities, heavy metals coming from the Amberley RAAF base and blockage from general waste dumping such as the high number of shopping trolleys recently pulled from the water.

Sustainable Ipswich Week seeks to change how people approach and respect the environment they live in. For those interested in how they can make changes to improve their city and health, visit the council sustainability week website HERE.