sustainability

forever carbon neutral.

From 2022 our events have been completely carbon positive and we intend on learning from the land, growing and expanding our green initiatives each year to ensure we leave the land better than when we started. 

In 2025, the Our Survival Day (OSD) theme was ‘Reigniting Our Spirit’. In alignment with this theme and the Our Songlines values which are ingrained in nurturing our relationship to Mother Earth, our team has continued to build on our sustainability initiatives with new learnings that we have adapted each year. Our Survival Day has been Protecting Our Mother since its inception in 2021, and we share our yearly environmental reporting with you to showcase the ease of zero waste events, whilst providing a safe event for all mob and allies. Thank you to all of those attendees who showed up this year and continue to show up, keeping our spirit ignited and the fire burning. 

Our Survival Day focuses on honouring the connection to land, and our responsibility to protect it, whilst celebrating Indigenous Strength. Everything is interconnected, from the soil, to the food on our plates, to the Songlines connecting people and places.

OSD has always been a reusable event, which means that our vendors don’t offer single use crockery, and we compost food scraps onsite, and some off site {depending on the updated FOGO requirements}. In 2023 we brought in a collaborative green partner who believes in celebrating with purpose, leaving a positive impact: the social enterprise B-Alternative (BA).

In 2025, they collaborated with local Mornington Peninsula Shire Waste Against Waste Trailer to localise partnerships and decrease emissions of their pack in. Our Protect Our Mother initiatives continue to focus on increasing compost, decreasing landfill and lowering our carbon emissions throughout all elements of the festival, and of course: teaching our young ones to look after Country. 

  • The BA team travelled to OSD by road, with 100% making the trip by car or van, and their emissions totalled 160kg CO2E over 1355km collectively, which would be sequestered by 4 trees. By carpooling, this saved 96kg CO2E.

    101 of you joined us on 13 July 2025 to connect to the soil and plant over 800+ trees on Bunurong Land as part of the Greens bush to Arthurs Seat BioLink that aims to create a wildlife corridor between the two parks. We succeeded in not only offsetting our emissions of Our Survival Day 2025, but removing more carbon that the event created, leaving no trace behind and being carbon positive.

  • The aim of bin fairying is to increase organics and recycling, and decrease landfill on the day from attendees and vendors collectively. The amazing Bin Fairy volunteers were the representatives for sustainability at Our Survival Day 2025. They buzzed around the bins, providing education to patrons looking to dispose of their waste correctly. 

  • 48kg/80l of organics were diverted (from landfill) which saved an equivalent of 336kg CO2E in carbon emissions. There was less than 120litres of landfill from 2000+ patrons, 9+ food vendors, 5+ stallholders with drinks. 

  • 1341 reusable dishes were washed, 90kg/650l of landfill waste was avoided through the event using reusable crockery (plates, cups, bowls).  

2025 Results

Protect our mother

2026

We are honoured to return to The Briars on Bunurong land.

Our Survival Day vendors, artists, stallholders and workshops will be caring for Country by using environmentally responsible packaging, materials, and saying no single use plastics. B-Alternative will be joining us again as our sustainability partner, and bringing their wash station to the event, to save on single use packaging for our food and drink vendors. You will find resource recovery bin stations around the event including composting and recycling, and the bin fairies who will guide you with any questions you have - with our aim to reduce our waste consumption as much as we can. 

Join in on the Our Survival Day Sustainability workshops where you can learn from First Nations people through talks, workshops, food, and cultural walks. Reconnect with your connection to this land, learn how to utilise bush foods, bush medicines and only take what you need from Mother Earth. 

We are grateful to be on this land and we hope you will join us in gratitude by respecting the natural environment and leaving the site as clean as when you arrive. We encourage you to make greener choices this OSD by bringing your reusable items with you including your coffee cup, a drink bottle which you can fill up on the day, and of course - a bag to store your goodies purchased on the day supporting Blak businesses.

We will also be planting trees to offset our carbon emissions from the event which you are welcome to join in on, by connecting further to Country and standing with our matriarch’s. The annual tree planting event will be held during NAIDOC week.

We cannot wait to continue igniting the spirit and stand with our matriarch’s to share this event with you all.