Bendigo's Green Push: Solar Grants, Creek Restoration and a New Waste Target All Move This Week

The City of Greater Bendigo confirmed this week it will accelerate the rollout of its Community Battery Program, approving two additional storage sites after a third-quarter budget review showed the council's sustainability reserve still held $1.4 million in unallocated funds. The announcement, made at Tuesday's ordinary council meeting on Hargreaves Street, puts Bendigo ahead of its own 2027 net-zero buildings target for council-owned facilities.

The timing matters. Victoria's state government has been pushing local councils to lock in energy projects before the next round of the Regional Sustainability Fund closes on September 30, 2026. Councils that miss that window face waiting until mid-2027 for the next application cycle, a gap that community energy advocates say could cost regional Victoria tens of thousands of dollars in delayed savings.

Epsom and Kangaroo Flat in Frame for Battery Sites

The two sites shortlisted for the new batteries are the Epsom Recreation Reserve on Napier Street and the Kangaroo Flat Community Hub on Mackenzie Street West. Each installation is expected to hold approximately 100 kilowatt-hours of storage capacity, enough to reduce peak-demand grid draw at both facilities by an estimated 60 percent during summer evenings. Installation is pencilled in for November, ahead of the high-demand December-to-February period that consistently pushes Bendigo's local grid close to capacity.

Separately, the Bendigo Creek Corridor Landcare Group wrapped up its winter revegetation blitz along a 1.2-kilometre stretch between the Queen Elizabeth Oval and Arnold Street on Wednesday. Volunteers planted 3,400 native tube-stock, predominantly river red gum, swamp wallaby grass and common reed, funded through a $28,000 grant from Coliban Water's environmental stewardship program. The work builds on 11 kilometres of corridor already revegetated since the group was formed in 2019 and is designed to reduce bank erosion that has been silting the creek at measurable rates since the 2022 flood season.

La Trobe University's Bendigo campus also confirmed this week that its Applied Environmental Research Group will publish preliminary findings from a 14-month soil carbon study in the Loddon Campaspe region before the end of July. The research, run out of the Edwards Road campus, tracked carbon sequestration rates on 23 farms across the region and is expected to give regional farmers the first locally calibrated data on whether shallow-rooted native pasture mixes outperform traditional ryegrass in locking up carbon. Agricultural land covers roughly 70 percent of the Greater Bendigo municipal area, which means the numbers could have direct implications for how local farmers respond to voluntary carbon credit schemes.

Waste Diversion Target Gets a Harder Edge

The council's environment directorate also tabled a report this week recommending a revised household waste diversion target of 65 percent by June 2028, up from the current 58 percent benchmark set in the 2022 Waste Management Strategy. The report points to contamination rates in Bendigo's yellow-lid recycling bins running at 14 percent, well above the state average of 10 percent, and proposes a door-knocking education program across the Strathdale and Eaglehawk wards beginning in August as the primary lever to bring that figure down. No additional kerbside charges are proposed at this stage.

Residents wanting to get ahead of the changes can book a free household hazardous waste drop-off at the Eaglehawk Landfill and Recycling Centre on Midland Highway on July 19, one of four scheduled drop-off days before the end of the financial year. The council's sustainability team will also run a free home energy audit program through August, open to households in postcodes 3550, 3551 and 3552, with bookings opening on the Greater Bendigo website from Monday. Audit recipients get a written report and are eligible to apply for the council's interest-free Green Loan scheme, which offers up to $5,000 for rooftop solar or insulation upgrades repaid through quarterly rates instalments over five years.