By Sara Pamplona Teixeira

Residents in Sydney's Chippendale suburb are growing food on the streets. Image: Sara Pamplona Teixeira

Cultivating food in urban areas is a rising trend around the world, according to the Organic Food Directory.

Urban food gardens feed over 700 million people in developing countries as well as meeting over 80 per cent of the vegetable demand in cities like Shanghai. There are currently eleven community gardens in Sydney alone.

Residents of Myrtle Street in Chippendale Sydney have adopted this new trend and are taking it up a notch.

The man behind this eco–revolution at Myrtle Street is Michael Mobbs, a sustainable designer and owner of a “sustainable house“.

Mobbs has been successful in spreading his eco-friendly lifestyle and ideas to the neighbourhood.

Fourteen years ago, he completely redesigned his two–storey townhouse to be self sufficient for energy and water and now he has helped his neighbours to grow food on the street.

“You make the streetscape more friendly by getting rid of the concrete and providing more shade,” he said.

Myrtle Street residents use their footpath to not only harvest herbs, fruits and vegetables but also for communal worm farms.

Mobbs has also organised for himself and a few of his neighbours a food share coop where once a week they get a box of vegetables from a local farmer for $35.

Mobbs’ sustainable house was his first attempt to reduce his household footprint on the planet.

At the sustainable house, the sewage water is recycled; the rain water is collected and the Solar panels absorb energy from the sun producing sufficient energy to its four residents.

His determination to make a difference has empowered and influenced his neighbours.

He said in an interview for Act Now that “some of them have copied some parts of the house and they’ve got rain water tanks and solar hot water heaters.”

Today, he rents rooms at the sustainable house and tries to influence his neighbours with his knowledge about sustainability.

Beth Kalin, an American architect and a tenant at the sustainable house is one of Mobbs’ supporters.

She doesn’t ’t see a downside to investing in sustainable designing because according to her, it enables you to take advantage of the space you have in a smart way, and in the long run saves you money with energy bills.

“The way the system works with being connected into the grid is when we need we just use it and when we have excess power we sell it back to the electricity company,” said Kalin.

Despite enjoying the eco-friendly lifestyle, Kalin has never lived in a sustainable house. So, she had to get used to the idea of drinking recycled water and not having a dryer.

“I couldn’t believe it when Michael said that the water I was drinking was recycled on site. I had to get used to the concept.”

Kalin said that there’s no dryer at the sustainable house because “there are openings on 3 of the 4 facades of the house. So, air is drawn in and there are a couple of skylights up at the top in Michael’s office that absorbs the moisture, and that’s why the clothes dry quickly.”

Stuart Kyles lives also lives on Myrtle Street.

He has embraced the green aspect of the neighbourhood as he believes that “utilising the space, better plusses for the environment.”

However, he is realistic about day-to-day life and says he would love to plant and be part of the green movement but time and space constraints play a big role in stopping people doing more for the environment.

June Elizabeth Taylor has lived for more than sixty years on the street, and is part of Mobbs’ street gardening.

Even though she thinks the whole concept is a good thing for the community, she said more should be done.

“A lot of people don’t look after them [footpath garden], they just let it go.”

The sustainable house has inspired hundreds of houses around Australia and New Zealand, and every September there is an event called Sustainable House Open Day, in which sustainable homes around Australia open their doors to the public in order to dismiss any wrong ideas on what it is like to live sustainably.

“It’s a really useful way for people to get first hand experience of it,” Mobbs said.

Presently, Mobbs and Kalin are collaborating on a project that will result in a sustainable community meeting room in Marrickville.

If you wish to spend a night at the sustainable house, it comes at a cost of $250.

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