The Good Hood Rewards Your Green Living Ideas

Are you tending to your herb gardens, upcycling or actual cycling? That's some good hood. The Good Hood website, which is part of the the City of Sydney's Green Villages program, is about celebrating the little things Sydneysiders are doing to make the city more green.

It's pretty simple: just snap a photo of your 'good' and upload it to the website — or if you're on Instagram, just turn on Photo Map and use the hashtag #goodhood. There's some pretty cool rewards, too, including vouchers for Megan Morton's The School and Clarence Street Cyclery and dinner for eight at Urban Food Market's pop-up restaurant in Chippendale.

Kylie Boyd, the sustainability marketing campaign officer for the City, says she's really happy with the way people are engaging with the site.

"We've got people making birdhouses and people completely decking out their backyards with boxes that they're planning on growing vegies in," she says. "Someone rescued a chair off the street and upholstered it with some really cute fabric."

"We're loving seeing them come in but we're going to reserve judgement until the very end!"

The prizes are on offer until September 25 for users who upload pictures of cycling, upcycling and sustainable food, with winners being picked by the City and the prize partners for each category.

Tim Elwin, the managing director of Urban Food Market, is helping choose the winners in the food category. Tim says he's looking for entries that make an effort to grow and source local produce as much as possible.

"What we’re after is for people to experiment and go out and see how they can eat on a sustainable level, things like, what can people grow at home to add into a meal that they’re doing?" he says. "Even going out and making sure that they source locally and source products that haven’t been treated in a bad way."

Urban Food Market are mainly wholesalers of ethical, sustainable produce, but they also run cooking classes and a pop-up restaurant in Cafe Giulia on Friday and Saturday nights.

"What we’re trying to teach people is that you might be buying a product that yes, is more expensive, but [you] eat less of it," says Tim. "There’s no need for a big massive steak. Add some vegetables so you get a well-balanced meal. It’s about reducing the demand for growing so much produce when so much gets thrown away.

"We’re very excited to be helping promote the Good Hood. It’s a wonderful thing to see [the City] getting behind such a great initiative, to ultimately get people to wake up and review how they’re living their lives, and what effects their eating and living can have on the environment."

Want to win one of three $100 vouchers to Urban Food Market's online store? Just share the best picture of a sustainable meal — it can be a meal with organic, homegrown, locally grown or ethically farmed ingredients, served at your own home or at your favourite cafe. Share the image on the Good Hood website or via Instagram by hashtagging #thegoodhood and #concreteplayground. Entries close on September 11. Urban Food Market's online store is a treasure trove of classes, free range meat, sustainable seafood, cooking equipment and dry goods such as Farmer Jo's muesli.