Adelaide’s first coolseat
Welcoming the first CoolSeat to South Australia!
The Port Environment Centre (PEC), a community environment centre running in Port Adelaide since 2019, runs programs to support the community to live sustainably, and to value, care for, learn about and enjoy Earth’s natural environment.
One very active program is our Port Environment Centre Waste Advisory Group (PECWAG) who focus on local waste and resource recovery solutions, including composting and green waste.
PECWAG work hard to develop the local circular economy, and to maintain a composting system at PEC. PECWAG are proud to be hosting the first CoolSeat in South Australia.
• The Port Environment Centre entrance with the CoolSeat and the community street garden
The idea to have a CoolSeat at PEC 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. 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 the community 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.
• Getting the compost bay started on the new CoolSeat
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. Coolseats are fabricated in Melbourne by Mrfoxinabox, a high quality design and fabrication business run by Ciro Guiliani.
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.
• PEC CoolSeat garden bed two weeks after planting
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.
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. We have added some comfy and colourful cushions to draw them in and put up a sign with more info. If you are in the Port Adelaide area, stop by, say hello and check it out!
• PEC Coordinator Alfie Lem sitting on our CoolSeat in front of the Centre
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Volunteers at the Port Adelaide Environment Centre