Ep 8: w/ John Zeppel | Town of Walkerville | Becoming a Councillor/Deputy Mayor + environmental passion + building a sustainable home

For this episode, we’ll be talking to the recently appointed Deputy Mayor of the Town of Walkerville, which is one of SA’s 17 metropolitan councils, and his name is John Zeppel. 

John runs an ICT business and has a passion for sustainability and the environment. His environmental passion pushed him in the direction to become a Councillor and more recently the Deputy Mayor where he chairs the Town of Walkerville’s Sustainability Committee. 

Learn about his unique journey into the South Australian environmental sector with some top tips if you'd like to take your enviro passion to represent your community. 

Welcome to another episode of the Green Adelaide Podcast. We are metro SA’s first environmental industry podcast.

We’re your insider scoop on all things cool, green, and wild in metropolitan South Australia.

This podcast is for those who want or have a career in SA’s environmental sector. 

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Transcript

John Zeppel:

A little bit of a motto, it's like, don't die wondering, and if I wasn't meant to get in I wouldn't have been elected. That's how I've worked on it, it's a bit like walking along down the corridor of life and trying the doors, and if the door opens maybe there's something in there for you, and if it's locked at this stage maybe that's not where you're supposed to be.

Melissa Martin:

Welcome to another episode of the Green Adelaide Podcast. I am your host, Melissa Martin, and I'm the communications manager at Green Adelaide, who loves Red-tailed Black Cockatoos.

We are metro SA's first and only environmental industry podcast, we're you're insider scoop on all things cool, green and wild in metropolitan South Australia. Before we jump in, remember to subscribe to our podcast for the episode alerts.

For this episode, we'll be talking to the recently appointed deputy mayor of the town of Walkerville, which is one of SA's 70 metropolitan councils, and his name is John Zeppel.

John runs an ICT business and has a passion for sustainability and the environment. His passion has pushed him in the direction to become a councilor and more recently the deputy mayor, where he chairs the town of Walkerville Sustainability Committee.

At home, he and his wife built a fully sustainable home, which we'll talk about more in this episode. Welcome John, thanks for joining us today.

John Zeppel:

Yeah, it's great to be here.

Melissa Martin:

Our first topic, we'll dive into getting to know you and your career a little better. Tell us a little bit about your journey, from your tech business and being an owner of your tech business and to being a deputy mayor and councilor for the local council?

John Zeppel:

Going back to really early days?

Melissa Martin:

Yes.

John Zeppel:

Whilst I'm in the city now, I actually was born in country South Australia, and we were a fair distance from any major town, in the Riverland between Loxton and Swan Reach. A long way from anywhere, so I was in a very harsh environment, so it wasn't unusual that we'd have really hot summers and dust storms were quite common, and in that era the management of the land is not what it is today, so we saw degradation of the environment.

I was there until I was 15, and at that stage I came to Adelaide to finish off my education at Concordia College at Highgate, as did the rest of my brothers and sisters, and I never went back from there.

From there I moved into, started an apprenticeship as an electrical fitter with the Department Defense at Salisbury, and growing up on the farm I was quite used to looking after equipment, repairing equipment, because you couldn't just pop down to the local shop and get a part, you had to make something yourself quite often, so the mechanical and electrical side of things was of great interest to me.

I did that for a while, then I got involved in electronics, and around that time computers started to become more of a thing and I moved into that space. I did some study in electronic engineering as well, and then computers came along and got interested in that and then went onto a computer and information science degree at the University of South Australia at the Mawson Lakes campus.

This was all while I was still working at the Department of Defense, and my career there was, I was getting more frustrated about being there, and the option to start my own business started to appear, and I was doing that as a bit of a sideline for a while, and it got to a stage where I was getting more interest and enjoyment out of doing that than what my day job was, so I went, "Well, it's probably time I move away from my day job and start being in business for myself," and that was in 1999.

I was operating just as a sole trader for a while, and then while I was involved with a new school at Mawson Lakes, Endeavour College, that's out there, I was involved in setting it up as a greenfield site, I got to meet some other people who were in the IT industry as well, who were on the board. One of them was in the business that I actually then merged my business into, and I've been doing that since 2002, so it's 21 years I've been in.

Melissa Martin:

Yeah, is there a specific thing in IT that you focus on for your business?

John Zeppel:

We are in small to medium business, supply, support and maintain, so we are the IT department.

Melissa Martin:

Okay, so you ran your ICT business, and where did you go from there? You did that for 22 years?

John Zeppel:

Yeah, well it's 21 years I have run that now, and we've been in the town of Walkerville, we moved in in 2013. The involvement we had in that community, and there's a number of environmental initiatives happening in our street, more of which was, there's a Bushcare that goes on and there's re-vegetation going along parts of the town, and there's a number of sites, some of which date back at least 20 years, this has started and it's community led.

Whether I ran for council or not, when that came up I was thinking about it, and a number of the community members in the street who are involved with the Bushcare group, were encouraging me, saying, "Well, yes, someone in our area needs to run for it, and how about you?" I went, "Me?" Then I thought about it for a bit and I'm going, "Well, I think I've got something to offer."

I've got a little bit of a motto, it's don't die wondering. If I wasn't meant to get in I wouldn't have been elected, that's how I've worked on it. It's a bit like walking along down the corridor of life and trying the doors, and if the door opens maybe there's something in there for you. If it's locked at this stage, maybe that's not where you're supposed to be.

I got to know a number of the fellow candidates during our journey, which was quite interesting, we were actually a group of us were working together prior to being elected, and interestingly enough, the entire group that worked together got elected.

Melissa Martin:

With your election process to become a councilor, your I guess, angle was around, or one of your priorities, areas, was around environmental sustainability focus, is what voice you would bring to the table as a councilor?

John Zeppel:

Yes, so I had, one of the planks of my campaign was about the environment and the sustainability of the area. The effects of having good green coverage, which is, and there's a number of studies that point towards this, saying that's good for people's mental health.

The Bushcare group I spoke of before, that's great for those people that are involved because it's a social connection, and so they get that benefit as well, and the environment benefits as well.

Melissa Martin:

You've recently been appointed deputy mayor of the town of Walkerville. I guess what drew you, you talked a little bit about it already around, I guess you're quite connected with your community in Walkerville and the idea came up and you brewed on it and you thought, "Yeah, maybe I can do it. I have something to offer."

What do you think drew you to do that and to actually put your hat in the game and be like, "I want to be a councilor, and one of my focus areas is going to be about environmental sustainability, as part of my campaign?"

John Zeppel:

It was, I could sit on the sidelines and complain about what's happening or not happening, or I could get in the ring and try to make a difference.

This is the first year of the four year term, I'm a first time councilor, so a lot of learning for me, and understanding how processes work. Moving forward from there, the sustainability side was noticed relatively early in our term, that was a piece of the puzzle that we thought that was missing.

The initiative to actually start the Sustainability Committee formed fairly early, and then by the time we got through the processes to actually make it all happen, so it's relatively recently that that committee has, first formed and has started, so we're looking forward to what it can do from here, from a community perspective for the benefit of the community.

Because as elected members, why we are there? Well, we're there to actually represent the people and to provide benefits to the town of Walkerville, by what we can do along the way.

Melissa Martin:

Yeah, from your career, working in IT, working for the Department of Defense, running your own IT business, and now in the next stage, the third stage of your career, being a councilor, a deputy mayor, what do you wish that you knew before you started your career?

John Zeppel:

That's quite an interesting question. In hindsight, if I knew then what I know now, I think I would've asked more questions, because you don't know what you don't know.

Everyone's in the same position to start with anyway, and the onboarding process, it's not that we've made vast amounts of mistakes along the way, but I would do a few things a bit differently that I now know that.

I wouldn't change a lot, and in some respects you're almost better off not knowing, because then you've just dived in, and then you learn to swim rather than going, "Oh, that might be a bit deep, I wonder what's going to happen." We dived in and no one seems to have drowned, and we're all talking to each other still.

Melissa Martin:

Yeah, yeah. Now we'll jump into our next round, which is our rapid fire round. For those of you who've listen to our podcast before, you know that for this segment we dive into random questions, this or that, what's your favorite, kind of questions, to just take a moment and pause from talking about the environment sector and just lighten the mood and just get to know our interviewee a little bit differently. First off, texting or talking?

John Zeppel:

Talking.

Melissa Martin:

Favorite day of the week?

John Zeppel:

Oh, any day that ends in a Y.

Melissa Martin:

Nickname your parents used to call you?

John Zeppel:

I don't recall I had one, as a nickname.

Melissa Martin:

Just John?

John Zeppel:

Late for dinner. No.

Melissa Martin:

Would you rather be able to speak every language in the world or be able to talk to animals?

John Zeppel:

Every language in the world.

Melissa Martin:

How long does it take for you to get ready?

John Zeppel:

Oh, I can be up and have breakfast and get organized and the 20 minutes travel to the office, I can be there in an hour from the time I wake up.

Melissa Martin:

On a scale of one to 10, how good of a driver are you?

John Zeppel:

Compared to?

Melissa Martin:

Bad?

John Zeppel:

One is good, 10 is bad?

Melissa Martin:

Oh yeah, actually yeah, one is good, 10 is bad. Yeah,

John Zeppel:

I'd say I'm on the lower end of the scale. Two or three, maybe.

Melissa Martin:

If you could travel back in time, what period would you go to?

John Zeppel:

In my lifetime or earlier than my lifetime?

Melissa Martin:

Any, travel back in time, any time.

John Zeppel:

Travel back in time. It would be fascinating to be back a couple of thousand years ago, to see what the world was like then, and the people that moved in this country.

Having had people living here for 60,000 plus years, to see Australia before any changes to the natural environment, that would be incredible.

Melissa Martin:

Place you most want to travel now?

John Zeppel:

Canada's probably on the list.

Melissa Martin:

Favorite childhood TV show?

John Zeppel:

We didn't have TV when I was really young, so I don't have a lot of memories of television at that stage, which is quite amusing, because my peers talk about these shows and I go, "I don't know what you speak of."

Melissa Martin:

How about a book then?

John Zeppel:

How about a book? I was never much of a book reader.

Melissa Martin:

Yeah, yeah. Waiting for computers to be invented. Favorite season?

John Zeppel:

Spring.

Melissa Martin:

That brings us to an end of the rapid fire round, thank you. Now we'll dive into your role as deputy mayor for the town of Walkerville, and from the angle of your environmental passion and how you bring that to the role that you play today. First off, can you run us through, what does a deputy mayor do?

John Zeppel:

The deputy mayor is there to support the mayor, and will be at events if the mayor cannot be there. If the mayor, who's the presiding member, can't be at a council meeting, then I'll actually run the meeting, so primarily as a support for the mayor.

Melissa Martin:

Yeah, and you still have a role, it's a similar role to when you were a councilor, but you have this extra responsibility on top of that now?

John Zeppel:

Yes, yeah, so the committees that I'm on are the same, that doesn't change. The responsibilities of this is, we have a weekly catch up with the CEO and the mayor, and that's once a week, down at the council office, so that we can just run through what's happening at the moment, and so then we're across where we're at.

That's really handy, because then any issues that we've picked up independently we can talk about. Then if there's going to be an event that the mayor can't be at, well then I'll know about it and can prepare for it, if needed.

Melissa Martin:

Yeah, and I guess one of the roles of a councilor is around how you make sure the voice of the community is heard, through your interactions with the community. Can you explain a little bit about how you facilitate that in your role as a councilor?

John Zeppel:

When I was running for council, I had a flyer that I put in everyone's letterbox. It had a phone number and an email address, and I spoke with a lot of people as I was ... I walked pretty much every street, both sides, of the town of Walkerville, at least once during the campaign.

I spoke with a lot of people, which was great, and I knew a number of people near where I live already anyway, but in the other areas, yeah, I had great conversations with a lot of people.

They were happy to reach out to me, with questions and information, and I still get quite a lot of correspondence by email from people who have picked up an issue, and if I can do something about it or at least raise it, I will. Yeah, quite happy to speak to whoever, on whatever topic, in the town of Walkerville.

Melissa Martin:

Yeah, so John, you are the chair of the Walkerville Sustainability Committee, can you explain a little bit about the purpose of this committee and its role in greening the area?

John Zeppel:

The committee itself has a number of elements to it, and there's environmental, social, cultural and economic in there. Environment is in there, yes, but it's not the only part, but the environmental side, it's an area I have an interest in.

The committee is concerned at tree loss across the town of Walkerville, and some of that is unavoidable, but we wonder whether all of it is unavoidable. The struggle between the growth of housing in an area, when the large allotments turn into multiples, and then how do you fit a tree in there, and the reasons why a tree is kept or not, is interesting.

Whilst we don't necessarily have a lot of effect on that, if we're aware of it in a bigger picture role, then we can at least see, is there a trend going on, that we think is the wrong direction, in there.

Do we have any ability to do something about it? Perhaps. Yeah, we're certainly interested in it, and the other parts of what we're doing, with the waste management strategies in the town of Walkerville-

Melissa Martin:

What is the purpose of the Sustainability Committee?

John Zeppel:

The purpose for establishing the committee is really a support to council on the matters of sustainability that relate to the town of Walkerville. It's specifically for our area and what we can do in our area.

Melissa Martin:

From your experience of being a councilor, now deputy mayor, do you have any tips for our listeners who have a passion for the environment like you, and who are considering becoming this influential leader in their community as a councilor, of how they could do that and maybe something that you wish you knew before you started your journey to become a councilor?

John Zeppel:

Getting involved with your community and finding out what's happening in your community is a great place to start. There are volunteer options through the council, and if you can find out what's available there, and the chances are there'll be a lot of like-minded people like yourself in that area.

If you have an interest in, whether it's walking, whether it's cycling, whether it's gardening, yeah, the chances are there'll be other people who live in your street or nearby, that you get involved with, so get involved with the community.

Melissa Martin:

Now, for our next topic we'll move on to your sustainable home, and I guess your journey in coming up with the idea and how you pulled it together and how it's going.

You built the sustainable home back in 2013, or you moved in in 2013. Can you just talk us through how this idea came about and maybe how long the build was and the process just overall?

John Zeppel:

We secured the land in 2010, and at that stage then we sat on it for a little while, because my wife at that stage was finishing her PhD, so building a house and doing a PhD is probably not a good combination.

We let that one reach its conclusion, and then with our involvement with what was formally known as the Alternative Technology Association, now Renew, we were both involved in the South Australian branch committee for that. The sustainability components that are often spoken of in there, and the Sustainable House Day, which was running every year, we had been along to a number of those open days to see what was being built.

We were wanting to build a house that was going to be low energy to run it, but also built so that we could live there well into retirement and have facilities that we would actually able to use when we're perhaps not as able as we are now to move around.

As part of that, we spoke with John Maitland, who was from Energy Architecture, to come up with a design for this block. The block's 400 square meters, and the front edge of it isn't square, it goes at an angle, so it's an interesting shape on one level.

Working with the architect to come up with the design for the house, to work out what we were trying to achieve in there. We happened to also, my wife was lecturing at university, we got a number of planning students in there to actually come up with their own concept of what to do. Which was great, because we gave them an idea of the budget and what they could do in there.

I would like to think, from their perspective they really gained something out of that, because it was a real world example, not theoretical, so here's an actual patch of dirt that we want to be able a house on, and here's what we wanted to do.

Whilst none of those designs that they came up ultimately ended up being what we did, it was just really good to see what they were suggesting, and that caused us to think through what we were doing, and-

Melissa Martin:

Were these architect students or what student subject was it?

John Zeppel:

That was in planning.

Melissa Martin:

It was in planning, yeah.

John Zeppel:

We were looking for the minimum energy consumption, so that led us down the path of doing a reverse brick veneer, so the brick is actually on the inside, and the outside is a lightweight material, which is a bit like blueboard, but it's not blueboard, it's a fiber cement product. That's relatively unusual, even by today's standards.

The inside of the building, the temperature remains very stable all year round, and we can go through an extreme heat wave and we can have a number of days of over 40, and the internal temperature is only slowly climbing, because it's gradually working its way into the building.

Melissa Martin:

How long, did it take three years to build or a little bit less than that?

John Zeppel:

It was 12 months.

Melissa Martin:

12 months, wow.

John Zeppel:

Yes, we built it, it was in 12 months. Yeah, it was in middle of September 2012. The rainwater tanks were the first part that went in, because they're in the back corner of the property, and they had to go in before the foundation.

They were the middle of September, and it was the long weekend in the following October that we actually moved in. A 12 month build on a one-off house, was yeah, quite a short time.

Melissa Martin:

Yeah, and quite a custom build.

John Zeppel:

Yeah, that's right, yeah, it's very unique. It's got the curved walls inside, and we've designed it, because the internal is a raked ceiling, so the main living area is four and a half meters to the peak, so it's very spacious inside.

I'm quite tall, so for me, if I walk into a house that's got the conventional eight foot ceiling, it's like, "Yeah, that feels quite low." That desire to make this as good as we possibly could, the best products in the world are not great if they're not installed properly.

As part of what we did, the CSIRO were having an air tightness study on houses in Australia, and so we put our house forward. We were in that sample group, and so it's a blower door test, so they seal one door and have a fan in it, and then they try and suck air out of the building, and then they're working out how much air is going out of the building.

Then, it was quite amusing at the time when they were there, they were trying to calculate the internal area of this building, and there's nothing straight or square inside, and it's got all sorts of interesting shapes, and so they were really puzzled on how to actually work out what is the internal volume of the building, because it's the number of air changes an hour is the measure.

They got the fan going and they were basically walking around with what is a tiny little smoke generator, and then yeah, just holding it against the door frames or against the power points, to see if there's air leaking in. It came out really, really well.

Melissa Martin:

Yeah, yeah, and what makes your home that you've built, with all these different custom features that you've created, what makes it regarded as a sustainable home?

Is there particular features that made it stand out as a sustainable home, or all these different features coming together, or how much energy, explain to me how that works?

John Zeppel:

There's a number of features. We've gone with rainwater, and so we've got filtration and disinfection on that. Every single window is double glazed. Every external door is UPVC, so it's thermally broken.

One of our hardest things we found, the frames of all the windows are UPVC plastic, and on one side of the property it will see the afternoon sun in summer, and we're 10 years in already and there's no discoloration in the plastic. It's not painted, it's just the original plastic which is white, and 10 years down the track it hasn't discolored.

We tried to use recycled timber where we can. A lot of the internal finishes we're trying to ... With a low VOC. We've gone with, it's polished concrete internally, for everything that's downstairs.

Melissa Martin:

Does that have a particular reason, why you went with polished concrete?

John Zeppel:

In winter, we've oriented the house, so we're taking advantage of the sun coming through. We want the sun to be able to hit the floor, so then the heat goes into the floor.

The polished concrete downstairs, the floor has hydronic heating and cooling, and at its time, the cooling part was quite unusual. The foundation's got 700 meters of REHAU piping in it, and there's five or six actual circuits in there.

When we need to cool the property, we actually run the in-floor system in a chill mode, and then we've got ceiling fans to move the air past the concrete floor, so there's no rug or carpet above it, so the air can heat exchange with the floor.

In winter, we don't need to run any fans at all to move the air, because the floor itself, it's being heated, but it's not hot, it's just not cold, and so the heat will naturally rise from that, so it's a-

Melissa Martin:

Features around rainwater, it's the water you use in your home. Ceiling, north facing of course, all these different features inside, are there features outside that help create a sustainable home for you guys?

John Zeppel:

We've got solar panels, solar PV, and at the time there was a discussion, do you do solar, hot water or not? Well, we spoke to a number of people about it, and we came to the conclusion quite quickly, that instead of putting solar hot water on, we would put more solar PV on, and then have a heat pump.

Any energy we're generating in electricity terms, can run the heat pump, if the heat pump's needed, and you've got less infrastructure, because you don't have all this pipe work that has to go up and down.

In days gone by you'd have the Solahart type hot water service, where the tank is actually on the roof. That's not such a thing anymore, you've got the tank down on the ground. Well, if you've got that, you actually have to have to pump the water, because the hot water will always stay up in the panel, it will never get back to the tank. We didn't go down the path of solar hot water, we just did solar PV.

The outside is, we've gone with wider eaves, to give more shading. Then the areas that, in the outside from the living area, which is a curved wall, we've got a number of shades that we actually put onto the window frames. We tried to minimize the amount of external painting where possible, even-

Melissa Martin:

Why is that?

John Zeppel:

So that then there's less to maintain. Because we're capturing the rainwater, we want to keep the water as clean as possible, so we've got little traps in there to stop the leaves from getting down into the tank. A gutter guard over the top to try and minimize the leaves, because we've got street frontage on two sides, and one side especially has a number of fairly big street trees, so a lot of leaves.

We've ended up using the front yard as a productive area, so we've got an amount of raised garden beds out there. We've got no lawn to maintain at all, we're fortunate in that we've got relatively close to us a number of parks and gardens we can go to when we've got the children or the grandchildren around. The front yard is a productive front yard.

Melissa Martin:

When you say productive, what do you mean by that?

John Zeppel:

We've actually got a number of fruit trees that we've planted there, a number of vegetables that are out there. It's predominantly all natives, so we wanted the yard to be able to look after itself, so that it's not higher on water use and maintenance.

Melissa Martin:

Your home, we were talking about before the podcast, your home was open for people to look at back in 2017-2018, and that was part of Sustainable Day in particular?

John Zeppel:

Yeah, Sustainable House Day.

Melissa Martin:

Sustainable House Day. People had the opportunity to look through your home and maybe get tips for their own build of a potential sustainable home. How did you get involved with that initiative, to showcase your home?

John Zeppel:

ATA, or Renew as is now, Sustainable House Day is driven by them. We looked at a number of houses in the years prior to us designing this one, so we were familiar with Sustainable House Day and what it all meant, and from our involvement with Renew we knew of it anyway.

We decided to make it open in 2017. We moved in in 2013, so it was nearly four years later, so we'd actually have some lived experience, and we'd had a chance to actually finish off the outside, because the external fence wasn't in in the first six or eight months and a few other things.

We'd been there for long enough to actually have some lived experience, and in the first year that we had it open, because at the time there was nothing quite like it that had been built that we were aware of, so we had a lot of interest and we had two people helping us on the day.

Because we'd been recording information about how the property had been going, we actually had some real data on what it was doing.

Melissa Martin:

I guess what would be a question on maybe our listeners' minds is maybe the costs involved. I know you project managed it, so is it costly to do such an activity? Or outside of maybe building a stock standard home, how do you ... It's obviously different 10 years later, a different environment we're working in, but is it costly, is it expensive to do this activity?

John Zeppel:

It can be, but it depends how you're measuring it. With some of the window styles that we were looking at, with what we ended up with, we were seeing costs on options that were nowhere near as good, that were actually more expensive.

Ultimately, yes, it is quite an expensive exercise to do, but then building a house that's built up to a standard, not down to a price, is going to cost you more.

Melissa Martin:

For those listeners who are thinking about the next project, and they want to make their home more sustainable, maybe just doing adjustments to their own home or starting from scratch, which you did, what would be your tips to get started, to create your home more sustainably? Maybe pick an easy thing to accomplish at first.

John Zeppel:

I spoke earlier on on how airtight our house is. If you can hear sound, then there's air leaks. If you can work out where they are and block them, that's going to make quite a difference to the performance of your building, because you won't be losing all the heat in winter and so forth. If you can do something about that, that's great.

Certainly look at what you've got in the way of shading, that you can take away in winter, so then you can have the effect of the sun in winter to warm the building. If you've got the option there, blinds that are retractable or something like that.

Another one, which is such a simple one to do, if you can hire yourself a thermal camera, find out how much insulation you have or don't have. That's really telling, because I've seen a number of properties. Renew South Australian branch had a thermal camera that could be hired out, and so great for that, and I've used that camera in a number of properties.

One of my children, his property, we had a look through there, and he found out that in their master bedroom that two thirds of the ceiling had no insulation. Once they put the insulation in, then all of a sudden the comfort level went up in that room.

Melissa Martin:

Yeah, and less air-con, less heating, yeah.

John Zeppel:

Yeah, a thermal camera is such a good thing, because it can show a lot.

Melissa Martin:

What are your one or two favorite features of your home?

John Zeppel:

The windows that go all the way down to the floor, and so we're seeing the outside, so all the garden that we've got along the side, which is the fence. Yeah, I really like that, and the other side that's got the curved wall with the windows that go all the way to the ceiling there, the view out to the sky, it's like, that's just gold.

You sitting there and going, "Wow." You're looking at ... You're still connected to the environment even though you're inside the building, so yeah, really, really like that.

Melissa Martin:

Before I let you go, just for our listeners who are new or ready for a transition, maybe they work in the environment sector and they're like, "I could be a councilor, that's probably the next step for me."

What's one learning that you wish you knew before you started? Let's focus on your councilor journey and your passion for the environment, what's one thing that you wish you knew? A year ago, what's one thing you wish you knew a year ago?

John Zeppel:

A great way to approach moving into something like that is, don't be scared about getting out there and talking to people. If you've got a passion for your area, and you've got a passion for things to be done for the benefit of the community, then put yourself out there.

There's very few people that do put themselves forward, so if you've got even an inkling of it, and a number of residents who I've spoken to on my journey, who have had questions about things happening in their area, and there's one particular lady who's come to mind, and I said to her, I said, "Look, you should run for council next time, because you've got such a passion for what you do in your area. You're the sort of people we need in our council, because you are so interested in where you live."

There's so much in every community, wherever you are. Get involved, it's like, don't be scared, don't hide away and wait for someone else to do it.

Melissa Martin:

We are at the end of this episode of the Green Adelaide Podcast. Thank you so much to our special guest, John Zeppel, who is the deputy mayor at the town of Walkerville.

I hope you've learned a lot about sustainable homes, and maybe it's inspiring you to build a sustainable home, from his experience and his passion for the environment which he brings to his role as deputy mayor.

This podcast is your insider scoop on all things cool, green and wild in metropolitan South Australia. I'm your host Melissa Martin, and I'll catch you for our next episode late next month. Bye.