> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # A Sunday at Woytopia, and the plates that came back - URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/woytopia/ - Published: 2026-10-13T07:33:55.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-17T05:27:56.000Z - Description: We caught the train up the coast on a spring Sunday for Woytopia, the free sustainable living festival the Peninsula Environment Group has run with volunteers since 2008. Here is the day as we lived it, from the first plate to the last tree. - Author: Nicole McMahon - Tags: Sustainable Living, All stories Woy Woy is an hour and a bit up the line from Sydney, and on Sunday 11 October the bus from the station to Woy Woy South Public School was already full of people heading the same way. Woytopia is free, it runs every second year, it is organised entirely by volunteers from the Peninsula Environment Group, and this year it was powered by renewables and plastic free. It was a sensational spring day, and the field was filled with happy people and a community that cares about the same things we do. There were about fifty eco market stalls, food vans from Vietnam to Chile, a clothes swap in the hall, a silent disco wandering through the crowd, and a program sheet so full we photographed it on the grass so we would not lose it. ![Festival goers on a green field between food vans and trees under a blue sky](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/woytopia-field.jpg) Food vans and the crowd under the gums. Photo: Nicole McMahon. ![A printed festival program grid on a sheet of paper lying on the grass](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/woytopia-program.jpg) The program sheet, photographed on the grass. Photo: Nicole McMahon. We sat down at the Forest Stage for Jake Cassar's bushcraft show at noon and stayed an hour. Jake teaches bushcraft from Kariong, and for more than twenty years he has gone out on survival missions living only on what the bush gives him. We could have sat there all day listening to how much he loves nature and the lengths he has gone to in the protection of our special places. Just before him Jane Lynch had spoken on deep ecology, and after him came a native animal show, Indian dancing with Jeetbeat, and at three o'clock Drumbala's drum circle to close the day. Then there were the plates. Every food van served on real plates and cups, bright blue cups with Cercle printed on the side and sturdy Ruzi plates, and around the field stood return tubs and a sorting station: a green caddy for food scraps, a bin marked "Re use items", a chalkboard saying "Let's sort it", and a red sign on the drop bin reading "Eat it. Drink it. Drop it." You ate, you dropped your plate in the tub, and it went off to be washed and used again. Ruzi, from Brookvale, delivers, collects and washes the plates; Cercle, the network it belongs to, was started in Sydney in 2021 by Patrick Manley because he kept forgetting his own coffee cup, and its cups and plates have now kept more than two million single use items out of landfill, washed in hubs that employ people leaving prison and people who have escaped domestic violence. Running the collection points on the day was Better Citizen, a small Sydney social enterprise whose motto is "Enjoy. Wash. Repeat." It was brilliant, and it cut down so much waste it was incredible. Not one plate in a bin. The sorting was run by Lisa Wriley of Kariong Eco Garden and her IBIS team, the Intelligent Bin Inspection System, and the numbers tell the story. In 2024 the festival sent more than 1,000 paper cups and 140 kilograms of paper plates and trays to landfill, about three cubic metres of it. This year the whole day's waste weighed 60 kilograms. And the whole festival ran on a battery. In 2024 the coffee machines needed petrol generators. This year a hired trailer carrying two reclaimed Tesla batteries, 120 kilowatt hours from MyNuEnergy, set up by its co founder John Myler, powered six supplies across the field all day, was down to its last one per cent at the four o'clock close, and is recharged by the sun between events. ![A green food scraps caddy, a white re use bin, a green landfill bin and a chalkboard on a school field](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/woytopia-sorting.jpg) Food scraps, re use items, landfill: the sorting station on the field. Photo: Nicole McMahon. ![A red Cercle and Betizen sign reading Returnable Collection Point on top of a black bin](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/woytopia-sign.jpg) Eat it. Drink it. Drop it. Photo: Nicole McMahon. ![Blue reusable cups and a beige plate in a grey tub on the grass](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/woytopia-tub.jpg) Bright blue Cercle cups and a Ruzi plate in the return tub. Photo: Nicole McMahon. Along the market we met the people we keep writing about. Permaculture Central Coast, volunteer run, had a stand full of enthusiasm and joy, silicone tea bags among the ideas on the table. Pillow Rebels, a family business from Somersby, fill their pillows with kapok, the silky fibre from the seed pods of a tropical tree. PEG's own Food Network was super interesting: every fortnight members choose exactly what they want from a list of organic fruit, vegetables, eggs and bulk pantry staples, the orders become one wholesale buy, and on Monday the members sort it all themselves at what they call the divvy. Electrify Bouddi, two hundred neighbours helping each other go electric, held a panel in the green talks tent. Members of the Australian Plants Society's Central Coast group were there with their natives. Curby, the Central Coast idea that lets you tag a bag of soft plastics and drop it in your yellow bin, has gone from a local trial to every household on the Coast. And SWAMP was super cool: Sue Bradley's thousand square metre garden on crown land at Tuggerah, where everything grown is given away and the working bee is the last Sunday of the month. Under one of the marquees stood a green banner: Central Coast Food Resilience Labs. "What could a resilient food future look like on the Central Coast?" it asked. "Come together. Share knowledge. Map what's already growing. Imagine what's possible." Behind it was Tanya Mottl, a member of Narara Ecovillage, the community of 150 or so people on the old agricultural research station outside Gosford, and one of the most passionate people we met all day. Tanya runs the labs through FutuResilience Events. This Friday 16 October, World Food Day, the first full Central Coast Food Resilience Lab runs from 9.30 to 4 at the Old Pioneer Dairy wetlands at Tuggerah, hosted with SWAMP: growers, food businesses, educators and neighbours mapping what the Coast already grows and where new connections could be made. "Food reaches our plates through a complex network that most of us rarely see," Tanya told Central Coast News. "Together, we'll begin building a clearer picture of what already exists locally, where our strengths and dependencies lie, and where stronger relationships, new ideas and greater local capacity could make a difference." More labs are planned across the Coast through to April 2027. ![A green banner reading Central Coast Food Resilience Labs, what could a resilient food future look like on the Central Coast](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/woytopia-banner.jpg) Central Coast Food Resilience Labs. Photo: Nicole McMahon. Inside Tanya's tent stood a whiteboard with a question in blue marker, "What helps you stay hopeful?", and a scatter of small green notes. Good things. David Attenborough. Meeting cool inspiring people, and Jane Goodall. There are so many people trying to make a change. My friends at Narara Ecovillage who do practical things. Grandchildren. My kids. Growing our own food, buying locally. Community garden, sharing knowledge. People learning and working together. Spending time with the trees. And twice, in two different hands: positive news. We read that one a couple of times. ![A whiteboard with the question What helps you stay hopeful and dozens of small green sticky notes](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/woytopia-board.jpg) What helps you stay hopeful? Photo: Nicole McMahon. At the end of the day my friend Cat Dorey and I decided to find a tree to lie under. We found a smooth barked apple, Angophora costata, at the edge of the field. It was not an enormous tree, it was absolutely stunning: pale pink and grey limbs over us, the leaves softly moving in the soft breeze of the day, butterflies fluttering through the branches, and the drum circle playing itself out somewhere behind us. A tree like that constantly gives to all of us, shading us from the sunshine and asking nothing back. It was the best way to hang out with people in nature. ![Looking up into the pale pink and grey limbs and green canopy of a smooth barked apple tree against blue sky](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/woytopia-tree.jpg) A smooth barked apple, Angophora costata, at the edge of the field. Photo: Nicole McMahon. We walked back to the station along the shoreline of Brisbane Water, and the pelicans were out on the water, the most incredible pelicans, with Pelican Island itself sitting just across the channel. To Julian Bowker, Mark Mann, Tina, Erin, Brenda and Lilly, this year’s Woytopia committee, to Zainem, one of Woytopia’s founders and the force behind the market stalls and the Food Network, and every volunteer of the Peninsula Environment Group who gave up their weekends to make a day like that for everyone else: thank you. We will be back on 15 October 2028, the date already pencilled in, and we will bring more friends. ### Sources and links An Earth to Sea News original. Nicole McMahon was at Woytopia on Sunday 11 October 2026\. Program details from woytopia.org and the Central Coast News preview of 7 October 2026\. Food Resilience Lab details from Central Coast News, 7 October 2026 ("Food resilience lab at Tuggerah"). Cercle figures from The Fifth Estate (17 February 2026) and PKN Packaging News (Lindy Hughson, 31 July 2025). Waste and battery figures from the Woytopia 2026 wrap notes shared by Julian Bowker, event manager. Photographs: Nicole McMahon, Earth to Sea News. Cat Dorey: @cometothehearth on Instagram. - [Woytopia](https://woytopia.org/) The festival and program. - [Peninsula Environment Group](https://www.peninsulaenvironmentgroup.org/) The volunteers. - [PEG Food Network](https://pegfoodnetwork.org/) The buying group. - [Jake Cassar Bushcraft](https://lovecentralcoast.com/things-to-do/activities-tours/kariong/jake-cassar-bushcraft-tours) - [Ruzi](https://ruzi.com.au/) The plates and cups. - [Cercle](https://cercle.com.au/) The reuse network. - [Better Citizen](https://www.betizen.me/) The collection points. - [Permaculture Central Coast](https://permaculturecc.org.au/) - [Pillow Rebels](https://pillowrebels.com.au/) - [Electrify Bouddi](https://electrifybouddi.org/) - [Australian Plants Society Central Coast](https://www.austplants.com.au/Central-Coast) - [Curby](https://curbyit.com/ %28confirm URL%29) - [SWAMP Central Coast](https://communitygarden.org.au/listing/swamp-sustainable-wetlands-agricultural-makers-project/) - [Narara Ecovillage](https://nararaecovillage.com/) - [Food resilience lab at Tuggerah, Central Coast News](https://coastcommunitynews.com.au/central-coast/news/2026/10/food-resilience-lab-at-tuggerah/) - [Woytopia sustainable festival set to return, Central Coast News](https://coastcommunitynews.com.au/central-coast/news/2026/10/woytopia-sustainable-festival-set-to-return/) - [World Food Day, FAO](https://www.fao.org/world-food-day) - [Woy Woy Fishermen's Wharf and the pelicans](https://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/central-coast/gosford-area/woy-woy/food-and-drink/woy-woy-fishermens-wharf)