Indigo Regen - Tidy Towns finalist in Behaviour Change Campaigns and Education

Meet Indigo Regen, Tidy Towns finalist in Behaviour Change Campaigns and Education.

Beechworth has a food waste problem, like everywhere else. Indigo Regen's answer isn't a lecture. It's a seat.

Cool Seats are raised garden beds with a hinged lid: drop your food scraps in, and worms do the rest. Five are now installed around town, outside the Early Years Learning Centre, Quercus Neighbourhood House, Beechworth Montessori, the Old Beechworth Gaol and Bandit Café. Each one diverts scraps from landfill (where they'd otherwise break down into methane, 28+ times more warming than CO2) and turns them into compost instead.

The project started small and deliberately so: a quick, visible win that could spark conversations on the street rather than sit in a report on a shelf. It worked. Support from the Chamber of Commerce, the Neighbourhood House, local schools and Indigo Shire Council followed, along with a Shire Sustainability Grant now funding The Adaptation Game, a free community resilience event launching this June.

Next up: an audit of local hospitality venues' food waste, more seats around town, and a Community Recycle Hub for everything that isn't food.

The real X-factor? The worms. Red wigglers can eat half their body weight in scraps a day, turning methane-producing waste into rich, usable compost. The quiet workers behind the whole project.

Good luck, Indigo Regen!

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