Sustainability a Pillar of the CBD

RMIT University student Leyla Acaroglu is bringing sustainability to Melbourne’s urban streetscape.

A winner of the City of Melbourne’s City Pillar Challenge, her Eco Innovators Showcase shop, at the corner of Little Collins and Swanston streets, will feature local eco-designed products, gifts and art.

The City Pillar Challenge takes unused pillars, built in the 1990s as street news stands, and asks students to turn them into innovative business or creative spaces.

The Eco Innovators concept takes eco-design, literally, to the streets. Ms Acaroglu hopes to demonstrate innovative and exciting environmentally-responsible projects, while providing a retail space that allows people to buy products with a reduced environmental impact.

“I want to provide useful information about sustainable consumption and help consumers and designers to see that ‘eco-designed’ products are not inferior to normal products in any way,” she said.

When the Eco Innovators Pillar opened, on Thursday, 29 October, it featured the work of 15 designers, and Ms Acaroglu hopes to be able to display the work of up to 25 designers at a time.

Frustration at not being able to find outlets that stocked environmentally-responsible products, and years of working in eco-design, led Ms Acaroglu to start Eco Innovators and enter the City Pillars Challenge.

“I thought that it would be a great opportunity to inspire and engage people with innovative, functional and aesthetically pleasing products that have reduced environmental impacts across their entire life.

“I really want to engage designers with eco-design and consumers with sustainable consumption and the pillar presented a fantastic opportunity to do this.”

The Eco Innovators Showcase has a street trading permit that allows it to operate for the next six months.

Ms Acaroglu, from the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning, last year won the University’s Patricia Guthrie Memorial Award.

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