Welcome to issue #40 for May 2026.

Get involved…

“Saving civilization is not a spectator sport” (LR Brown, 2008), so here are a few things you can get involved with this month:

• If you have an apartment, encouraging your Body Corporate to join the City of Port Phillip Sustainable Apartments Program to get free advice on how to best electrify your apartment building could be well worthwhile
• If you can spare it, consider donating some money to the Australian Youth Climate Coalition which is in a funding crisis
• Wednesday 6 May, 6:30pm-8:00pm, St Kilda Library, join the Electrification for Rentals seminar to learn about the challenges and opportunities for electrifying apartments

• Saturday 2 May, 10-11:30am, Port Phillip EcoCentre join the Grant Writing Workshop
• BEFORE Sunday 3 May, register your interest in joining SouthEast Water’s Community Panel to help shape their coming 5 year plan
• Monday 4 May, 7:30pm join the Parents for Climate Electrify your Home webinar
• Saturday 16 May join the Port Phillip PIckers harvesting public olive trees
• Saturday 16 May join the Special Volunteer Day at Westgate Park to work on the ark of rare and critically endangered plants from the western grass plains of Victoria which were planted in June 2025
• 17 May – sign up for the Gravel Macedon off-road bike tour
• Get involved in citizen science – try the Port Phillip EcoCentre, or one of these alternatives
• Join a local walking group to stay healthy and maintain social connections
• Visit the Port Phillip EcoCentre events page to see what events you might like to join
• Visit the City of Port Phillip Have Your Say page and give feedback on a consultation that interests you – the Our Coastal Future consultation, for example, is very important in the light of coming climate changes
• Join the regular Friday Vigil at 12:30pm outside the office of Josh Burns MP in Barkly Street St Kilda to protest against new oil and gas developments
• Spend one hour/month cleaning a beach with your local Beach Patrol group, which are organized by postcode
• Do a Heat Preparedness Assessment of your local neighbourhood using the Sweltering Cities Cool Walk methodology and send your report to Council

• Finally, consider making your voice heard in the:
• • Birdlife Australia’s email campaign to expand the federal governments’s Saving Native Species program
  • The Australian Marine Conservation Society’s petition to keep seismic blasting out of Australian marine parks
  • The Australian Conservation Foundation’s email campaign asking the Environment Minister Murray Watt to strengthen his proposed new environmental standards
  • The Australian Marine Conservation Society’s email campaign to tell Woolies and Coles to stop sourcing salmon from Macquarie Harbour
  • The Wilderness Society email campaign asking Bunnings to stop using a major timber supplier that has been linked to logging critically endangered swift parrot habitat
  • The Beach Patrol petition asking the Victorian government to mandate tethered bottle-caps to reduce plastic waste

If you have a topic you would like to see in this newsletter, send an article in for consideration by replying to this email. Articles that incorporate a (1) relevant banner image, (2) short title, and (3) 1-2 short paragraphs of text (100+ words), with relevant hyperlinks, are most suitable.

Environment is no one’s property to destroy; it’s everyone’s responsibility to protect.

Mohith Agadi

We are living and working on the unceded lands of the Yalukit Willam people. We pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land and their ongoing connection to land, waters, sky and culture.

PECAN will be hosting the following meetings and seminars during the rest of 2026:

Working meetings: Port Phillip EcoCentre, 5:30pm, last Wednesday of the month (25 Feb, 25 Mar, 29 Apr, 27 May, 17 Jun, 29 Jul, 26 Aug, 30 Sep, 28 Oct, 25 Nov)

Seminars:

The first of a series of four seminars to be jointly hosted by the EcoCentre and PECAN will be held on Wednesday 27 May from  5.30pm – 7.00pm, at the EcoCentre, 55A Blessington Street, St Kilda. The topic is: Tackling increasing heat in urban environments: greening, trees and permeability All welcome.

Electrify Southside – a PECAN affiliate – is also hosting a Community Seminar on Energy Efficiency for Rental Homes, Wednesday 6 May, 6:30pm-8:00pm, St Kilda Library. It should be a very interesting discussion, with some very good speakers

Around Melbourne…

Lime have rolled out a new, more compact rental ebike design for use around the world, including in Melbourne.

We are finally starting to see more public EV chargers around Port Phillip. There are only 3 so far, and several more in semi-private locations.

It was very disappointing to read about the large number of cable ties, etc left scattered around Albert Park Lake after the Grand Prix. “Fouling your own nest” could be mentioned.

In a Port of Melbourne sponsored project, novel aquatic habitats are being developed in Fisherman’s Bend and will soon be installed at Lorimer Beach to improve local biodiversity.

The City of Melbourne Council has endorsed a $780 million proposal that would bring more than 1000 homes, a hotel, retail, office space, public open space and an “arts hub” to the Lorimer Street Precinct in Fishermans Bend.

The state parliament will debate a new Bill putting “to promote and protect the health and safety of building occupants and the public” at the heart of all construction activities and the regulation of those activities.

Not strictly in Melbourne, but two men were recently fined $15,000 each for illegally scuttling an unseaworthy fishing boat 11kms off the NSW coast. It raises questions about where/why boat scuttling is legally permitted, and why the men were not required to recover the scuttled boat?

Recently seen…

The Australia Institute’s Australia Gas Giveaway Tracker which shows how much tax income Australia has foregone, and continues to lose, by NOT charging gas exporters a 25% sales levy since July 2022. Many organizations are making very strong submissions to the Senate Select Committee on the Taxation of Gas Resources – watch here, for example.

This excellent short video clearly explains why tree canopy around buildings provides many benefits, and why developers do not plant them in new housing estates.

Lots of good tips for making your winter bicycle commutes more pleasant.

It was good to read that the Albanese Government is partnering with the states to protect bushland bigger than the size of Kakadu. We need to get to 30 by 30.

It was pleasing to read that sales of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) have been banned in Australia, which is a big win for our native animals. They often eat the carcasses of poisoned rats and are in turn poisoned themselves.

The Australia Institute’s Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Australia 2026 report shows that various government entities gave over $16 billion in subsidies to fossil fuel producers and users. This is a lot of money that could have been spent on improving the lives of Australians instead of lowering the operating costs of large and very profitable companies.

A systematic review of research has concluded that exercise can mitigate depression and anxiety symptoms across all population groups and should become a first-line intervention for mental health treatment.

This report says the local blueberry industry has grown tenfold in the last 20+ years, but there are growing concerns about poor farm pesticide practices and a lack of quality oversight.

This very good video explaining why it is in farmers’ best economic interests to start changing out their fossil fueled farming machinery with battery powered electric equivalents and make their own electricity on farm using well proven renewable energy technologies.

This informative Victorian government website can help you plan for the progressive electrification of your home.

Food rescue in Port Phillip

Food rescue, or food recovery, is the practice of collecting safe, edible surplus food from businesses, restaurants, and farms that would otherwise go to landfill and distributing it to people in need. As well as large organizations like OzHarvest and SecondBite, there are also many local community groups in Port Phillip offering similar services. These include the Port Phillip Community Group, the Sacred Heart Mission, the Park Towers Community Pantry, the South Melbourne Market Families Breakfast Club and Empower Australia, among others. Several local Coles, Woolworths and Aldi supermarkets and the South Melbourne Market and other food related businesses support them. Often, excess food is first sent to a charitable organization that sorts and grades it and then passes it on to other groups like the Salvos, Windana, Jewish Care and others for final distribution.

A recent addition to this local network is St Kilda Food Rescue Group, a grassroots, volunteer-led initiative focused on redistributing surplus food within neighbouring suburbs. Operating via a simple weekly roster, volunteers select local pickups from participating outlets, with food drop-offs typically taking place between 2:30-3:00pm and community collections from 3:15-4:00pm (new times) at the St Kilda Bowls Club. All transport is kept hyper-local, and the food is shared free of charge, with any remaining items donated to Christ Church Mission to support their programs.

The Ask Izzy website is a very useful resource if you need support of any kind, or just want to learn about the various community organizations working to support the disadvantaged. It is postcode searchable.

As another interesting sidebar, there is also the free Too Good To Go Australia phone app that shows you where you can buy inexpensive end of day “surprise bags” from a variety of different food outlets that contain food that would otherwise go to waste.

Understanding the Primary Energy Fallacy

Energy is often measured at source as the amount of energy mined or harvested from various sources like the sun and wind. When, calculated this way we are still mining a lot of oil, coal and gas so these are still the biggest sources, even though energy harvested from the sun, wind, etc have been growing very strongly for the last few decades.

However, this measurement does not consider any conversion losses when we actually use this energy to do useful work. For oil, coal and gas, these conversion losses are very large. For example, only about 30% of the energy within coal comes out as electricity when it is burnt in a powerstation. Similarly, a similar percentage of the energy in petrol is converted to actual motion of a car (and the rest is wasted as heat and friction). By contrast, solar, wind, etc, directly output electricity and there are essentially no conversion losses.

Recent research suggests that this way of framing energy (which ignores conversion losses) is very deceptive and a much better approach is to begin with consumption – counting the amount of energy actually used to do useful work and provide useful heat and and identifying where this energy has come from. Looked at in this way, it becomes very clear that fossil fuels waste most of their energy content (which effectively shrinks their segments to around 1/3 of what they are in the above chart, which means that renewables, hydro and nuclear are sourcing a much larger part of the energy that performs useful work).

Interestingly, because the conversion losses in a renewable, hydro and nuclear powered world are so much lower the total production capacity needed to satisfy global energy demand also shrinks greatly as we transition away from fossil fuels.

What to do about fast fashion?

According to this interesting article, fast fashion is driving massive over-consumption, with Australians buying around 56 clothing items per year and contributing to a global textile waste crisis. Discarded garments often enter complex second-hand markets, with huge volumes ending up in places like Accra, Ghana, where unsellable clothing accumulates in waterways and landscapes. Researchers argue the real solution lies not just in recycling but in reducing overproduction, adopting circular design and encouraging consumers to buy fewer, longer-lasting garments.

Replacing industrial urea fertilizer on farms

Urea fertilizer is made by combining ammonia (NH3) with CO2 under high pressure and temperature. Beforehand, the ammonia is made by combining atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen, and hydrogen is now mostly made by combining methane gas (CH4) with water at high temperatures and pressures. This all releases lots of CO2 into the atmosphere.

When it is subsequently spread on agricultural fields, urea is broken down by soil microbes into ammonia and then nitrites and nitrates, which plants can photosynthesize to make the long chain organic molecules needed for their growth. Making urea industrially is very capital and energy intensive, releases a lot of greenhouse gases as waste and is fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels.

If you have cheap renewable energy, water and air, there is new Australian plasma nitrogen technology which lets farmers directly produce water saturated with nitrites and nitrates on farm (without involving any fossil fuels or transport costs). This saturated water can be spread on fields just like urea fertilizer but in lower concentrations because it is more directly useful for plant growth. It is much cheaper than buying industrial urea and transporting it to the farm, and it is much more environmentally friendly. A big win for farmers and the environment.

It is surprising that our Australian Government is subsidizing a new urea plant at the Burrup Hub, but does not seem to be encouraging on-farm plasma nitrogen setups.

Intensive farming practices

Continuing our farming theme, the segmented landscape above is an area filled with farming greenhouses in Almeria, Spain. In the early 1900’s this region was largely semi-desert, but now it produces a significant proportion of all the fruit and vegetables eaten in Europe.

Intensive fruit and vegetable farming done in greenhouses like these, and where a lot of value add beyond simply growing the plants is done, can have a lot of benefits for regional communities. This kind of farming does not use a lot of land, is very frugal in water consumption, often avoids chemical pesticides and insecticides by growing plants in a protected indoor environment, and provides significant employment. But they still need nitrogen fertilizers. Support service providers also like this kind of food production hub where they have many customers in close proximity. Because products are much less commoditized, prices are also usually much more stable. Personally, I think that we should be doing much more of this kind of farming in Australia. And to combat climate change and protect biodiversity (in most of our land), we need to start eating much more plant based diets.

A bit of fun…

Turn your office building into a an urban fruit and vegetable garden like Vo Trong Nghia Architects – one of my favourite architectural practices, they are based in Ho Chi Minh City. Learn more here.

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