Yass Valley Eco Champs

Yass Valley Eco Champs is a promotional program giving recognition to local businesses who are making efforts to increase their environmental sustainability. If you are a local business and would like to be featured in the program, please email Rebecca at [email protected]

Tootsie Gallery and Café is a beautiful place to visit and enjoy a colourful space and delicious food. Created by mosaic artist and mentoring practitioner Cayla Pothan, Tootsie is all about creating a “bigger picture” lifestyle, and this shines through in the efforts Cayla makes to make her business more sustainable.

Since the very beginning, Cayla has incorporated a less waste ethic into her café and gallery. 80-90% of the coffee grounds produced by the café are taken by customers to incorporate into their compost or garden at home, something Cayla is delighted about. “I’d rather see them go into gardens than into landfill.”

The café produces very little food waste since instituting a new system where no sandwiches are pre-made, and only a handful of cakes are prepared for each day. By avoiding filling a large cabinet with pre-made food, at the end of a quiet day, there is very little being thrown out.

The gelato containers (from the café’s 24 flavours available) are washed and left out for customers to take for free, and are reused by Cayla to store materials for her artwork.

Cayla’s main concern at the moment is milk bottles. They are all recycled (including the lids, which the café collects for Lids for Kids), but Cayla would like to avoid using them altogether. She is currently investigating a way to source milk that doesn’t involve so much single use plastic.

Tootsie often hosts events and provides no single use items, keeping enough event items onsite to wash and reuse. Tootsie also recycles all their cardboard, either through commercial recycling or using it as packaging for Cayla’s artworks.

Cayla’s artwork features upcycled items such as bottle caps, keys and glass offcuts. Creating beautiful artworks from items which would otherwise end up in landfill is something Cayla has also encouraged others to do, running creative workshops at the Gallery including Making Garden Art from Junk, and a Steampunk art workshop using “rubbish” items such as old toys, bottle tops, nuts and bolts, formula spoons and safety pins.

“I’m always looking to see what else we can do” says Cayla. “I’ve always been passionate about looking after the environment. I’ve got kids, and I really want to take care of our environment for their future”.

2 June 2021

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