EfS in Queenstown Lakes

Biodynamic prep at Glendhu Bay

2010-11-17T12:19:00.000+13:00

My friend Su Hoskins has recently started doing some work for John McRae out at Gelndhu Bay Station. I'm a big fan of both of these people and really support what they are doing in our town in terms of organic growing. Su asked if I would like to take the Wanaka Young Change Makers down to Johns place to learn about the biodynamic prep she is making and applying to his land. How could we say no?

Waste Audit at MAC

2010-09-13T12:50:00.004+12:00

The Regeneration Otago Quaranteen Island weekend inspired Meg & Violet to start plans to get some kind of level upon their school recycling system. One of the actions that came out of producing these plans was to do a waste audit at school. We needed some data about what exactly Mount Aspiring College were throwing away before we could design a system to direct it to the best stream and then

The Outlook for Someday

2010-09-03T11:30:00.000+12:00

Wanaka Young Change Makers have been making a short film to enter in the Outlook for Someday film challenge this year. We've spent the last few Tuesday sessions at the Crib working on this as well as Megan's MAC waste audit. Last night filming was done! It's gonna be SICK!!!!!!

What happens when you get all the Enviroschools together in one place?

2010-07-05T11:53:00.000+12:00

Aside from lots and lots of work, it tends to go a little crazy. On the first night of our Wellington national hui the Wellington Team put together an amazing skit / play / thing?????? Who knows what to call it, but it certainly was fun. Roles were swapped and the story was told of one facilitators plans for a student hui casued himself and his new girlfriend a fair amount of stress on evening.

Raumati South Kindergarten

2010-07-05T11:23:00.003+12:00

If anyone tries to tell you that you can't do EfS with kindergarten aged children, tell then to check out Raumati South Kindergarten. Their place is AMAZING! One of the first things you notice are the incredible grounds. There is evidence of reuse everywhere. Which ever way you turn then you'll find some food growing, even at the start of winter. They even have their own aviary, how cool is that?

Muritai School - Petone, Wellington

2010-07-05T10:35:00.001+12:00

The day before the Enviroschools National Hui for 2010 I went on a tour of some of the local schools. First stop was Muritai School in Petone. We were welcomed onto the school with an amazing powhiri and listened to some very empowered students talk about their Enviroschools journey. Being seated in the green room, a class room block that has a focus on sustainability, was also really

Edible Gardens with QPS Seniors

2010-07-05T09:30:00.000+12:00

Miss Reed, ex Glenorchy now QPS, asked me to work with a crew of her senior students to help them with their edible gardening inquiry. As seems to happen so often in school it is really hard to get someone to help out doing these things, which makes my job super rad because I can go in and help them out.There are 9 of them in the group and as you can see the other six were busy doing other things

Central Otago Enviroschools Workshop - June 2010

2010-06-22T13:58:00.001+12:00

With the success of the Central Otago Hui under my belt I felt it was time to step up and run the yearly Central workshop too. As usual I was nervous as, I wasn't sure if my programme was going to hit the spot, but thanks to some amazing help I think we got there. The main subject was action planning. We've been doing things the Enviroschools way in Central for the last 3 years and I thought it

Smiddles worm farm

2010-05-25T14:04:00.000+12:00

After spending ages at Queenstown Primary I managed to inspire the smiddles, yep you read it right, they are kinda past being middles but not quite seniors, so smiddles they become. There were 4 students from each of the three classes and we had a great morning. We had a chat about the action learning cycle and all the different stages to a successful project. Then we set about identifying our

Project Te Radar

2010-05-25T13:21:00.000+12:00

At Kahu youth we decided that it would be awesome to invite Te Radar to come and visit us on World Environment Day.To make our invitation as cool and irresistible as possible we've decided to make a video. We reckon he should come and visit Wanaka and help us inspire more people to join us on our regeneration mission! We are making a short film to show Te Radar all the cool things we can offer

ReGeneration - Deep South

2010-05-25T13:16:00.001+12:00

I'm sure you will all remember the Regeneration tour of last year that visited us here in Wanaka and jammed with us for the day. One of the things the ReGeneration project aims to do is bring young motivated people together to learn about issues that we are facing and figure out what we can change and do in our towns and country to make the transisiton into future times as easy as possible.

Queenstown Primary have an Envirogroup

2010-05-25T12:42:00.000+12:00

On a Thursday lunch time two students from each of the syndicates at Queenstown Primary get together to meet to discus all the wonderful Enviroschools work they are doing. They've created roles for everyone to do, a secretary, a reporter, a photographer even a presenter for QPS news. Everyone has a job to do. This will really help to bring together all the work they are doing and help achieve a

Recycling and Compost at Queenstown Primary

2010-05-25T12:14:00.000+12:00

Once again it looks like my skills of keeping this blog ultra fresh have escaped me. Hold on tight and get ready of a series of posts to sum up term 2 so far, and boy has it been a busy one. The term started with a mammoth Zero Waste Education booking at Queenstown Primary. Two teams, two units. Recycling and compost were the subjects and I had a ball working with these 7 classes. Their school

Wanaka - The Vision Map

2010-04-13T14:41:00.001+12:00

We have started adding the photos and activities we discovered last week onto Google Maps. You can look at the Kahu Youth Google Map here

Enviroschools at Kahu Youth....

2010-04-07T10:38:00.000+12:00

Last week a few of us got together at Kahu Youth to discus the kinds of activities and projects that we would like to achieve in Wanaka for young people. One of the things that came up was that there is possibly a lot of stuff to do in Wanaka that no body really tells us about.... Since it's now school holidays we have Tuesday's down at the Crib set aside for Enviroschools activities. This week

Growing Locally - Central Otago Hui

2010-03-31T10:28:00.002+13:00

I woke rather early on the morning of Tuesday 23rd March. Born from an idea at the Wanaka Enviroschools cluster meeting, the day had finally arrived for the first Central Otago Enviroschools Hui. Everything was looking so good aside from one thing, the weather. Rippon and Te Kakano are our hosts for the day and most, no lets get that correct, ALL of the activities for the day were outside.

Recycling an entire house....

2010-02-16T09:34:00.000+13:00

Here at Wastebusters we see the problems that are associated with building and demolition waste. According to some figures I've read, this could take up possibly 50% of landfills. Many people say that it's just too hard and way too costly to de-construct a house and separate the waste into streams. When I was in the UK this Christmas I noticed that they are putting a lot of effort into sorting

Global warming and snow storms....

2010-02-12T13:56:00.001+13:00

When I was in the UK this Christmas and smack in the middle of the fantastic snowy weather there was a fair amount of conversation about how a snow storm was disproving 'Global Warming'. The main thing that struck me about this conversation, was the complete lack of understanding of the issue. I thought we had somehow managed to move away from Global Warming and into Climate Change. Freak snow

Eco Hut at Makarora

2010-02-12T13:52:00.000+13:00

This week is all about going to the outer edges of my district. Fully inspired and motivated by Glenorchy I now find myself heading off to Makarora to spend some time with those guys working on their Eco-Hut. We had a couple of sessions last year, as regular readers will remember. We came up with some pretty cool ideas and also built some models to see how different shape structures determine

Water at Glenorchy

2010-02-12T13:13:00.000+13:00

Glenorchy Primary was the destination for my first school visit of the year. I always love going up there, such an amazing drive and I always have a wonderful time when I get there, although for some reason I seem to put my forgetful head on as soon as I arrive. I've left a notebook there, but this time I left a whole crate full of resources....ooooops. Anyway....lets focus on the good stuff.

Queenstown Primary Enviroschools 2009 Open Day

2010-02-08T15:31:00.001+13:00

At the end of last term Queenstown Primary held a fabulous open day to showcase the work the whole school has done over the last year as part of their commitment to becoming an Enviroschool. Now it's just occurred to me that I've given two talks about the day but neglected to write a blog posting about it. So, shall we cast our minds back to mid December 2009? It was a super hot day, gorgeous

Edible Gardening at Todmorden High School, in the UK

2010-02-01T11:59:00.001+13:00

This summer I was lucky enough to make the long journey home to the UK to see my family. Whilst there I thought I would do what I could to see how the other side of the world approached Education for Sustainability in schools. During my online investigations I came across a project in West Yorkshire called Incredible Edible in Todmorden (http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk). They’ve had

Eco Huts at Makarora

2009-12-04T13:50:00.000+13:00

Makarora have been investigating eco-building. I last went to visit them mid term 3 and had a real good session looking at different building designs and construction methods. This term it was time to start building a few models how their designs and then put them to test with a few experiments to see how strong they are. We managed to isolate three different designs, a simple box type shape, a

Worm Farming with QPS Middles

2009-12-04T13:35:00.000+13:00

The middles syndicate of Queenstown Primary have been doing some amazing work with worms this year. I've visited all of the classes and we have learnt so much. So much in fact, that when I visited them a couple of weeks ago I was blown away with the knowledge these young people have about taking care of their organic waste. They have been collecting their food scraps for a while and sending them

350 comes to Treble cone

2009-10-02T12:02:00.007+13:00

By now, I really hope that if you're reading this you know what 350 is about.....if not please read my previous post. I'm also pretty certain that if you've ever spoken to me about it you'll have heard me talk about how cool it would be if we could do something connected with one of my passions.....snowboarding. As the effects of climate change start to happen there is a possibility of our snow

Three Little Pigs

2009-09-22T10:53:00.006+12:00

Wanaka Primary put on quite possibly the best school play I have ever seen. With their new school being built and the school embracing the Eco-Hut Challenge, the juniors have embraced this with their production of the three little pigs.Held at the Lake Wanaka Center, which was packed to capacity, the children gave an amazing performance. I'm sure we are all aware of the story of the three little

Do we have enough resources to keep on going like this?

2009-09-22T10:26:00.002+12:00

When I was trained on the Zero Waste Education Resource Sustainability unit a few months ago I was pretty inspired with the content of it. It's aimed at intermediate level students, years 7 & 8, and boy does it pack a heavy weight punch.Essentialy we look at the resources we have on planet Earth. What is our stuff made from? How is it made? What resources do we use in making it and getting it to

Reusing in the old goldtown

2009-09-22T09:47:00.004+12:00

It would appear that September 09 is all about going back to schools I haven't been to in ages. It's so good to be back in Arrowtown Primary. 5 middles classes were the first to see me in my mamouth two week visit.As usual there were some very imaginative creations with the reusing objects in a bag game. What I do with this activity is; Split the class into five groupsEach group gets a brown

Chickens at the head of the lake......

2009-09-22T08:45:00.007+12:00

It seems like it's been way too long since I paid a visit to Glenorchy. I tell you what, these guys have been busy......I'm sure you'll remember that they were planning to install a chicken coop to help take care of their organic waste, well it's arrived and is awesome!The purpose of my visit wasn't to go and see the chicken coop, I had other things to do. Mainly deliver a few of the Zero Waste

Central Otago Edible Garden Workshop

2009-09-21T14:25:00.006+12:00

Edible gardens are on the tip of everyones tongues in EfS world at the moment.....mostly becasue growing your own food is not only fun but one of the easiest ways to help reduce our carbon footprint. The food we buy, especially here in Central has to come a very long way to get to us and as such has pretty high food miles associated with it.This workshop was organised by Kathy Hamilton (Healthy

Wanaka Enviroschool Cluster Meeting

2009-08-27T09:13:00.004+12:00

I got together with Wanaka, Hawea Flat and Makarora Primaries last night at Sailz Cafe in Lake Hawea to discus what we are doing in school at the moment in relation to Enviroschools and anything else connected with sustainability. Sailz Cafe very kindly offered to shout us the coffee too, what an amazing gesture, so remember the next time you're hanging out in Lake Hawea, pop in there for a cuppa

Grime Seen Investigations

2009-08-27T08:47:00.003+12:00

I've got yet another super cool project from Ivy (ivy@wanakawastebusters.co.nz), The Third Fiddle in the Department of Dreams and Ideas down here at Wanaka Wasteusters. So here we go, over to Ivy......Have you ever been walking, biking, driving along enjoying some of the fine scenery this country has to offer, when there in front of you is the eyesore of someone’s discarded chip packets, empty

Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village

2009-08-26T14:55:00.002+12:00

Imagine a whole village built from old bottles......wouldn't that be cool? Well that's exactly what Grandma Prisbrey thought, so she built one. Check out the website about this amazing village made out of old discarded bottles. The colours are amazing, especially as the light shines through and I'll bet the walls have a really high 'R' value. All you have to do is plug up the gaps and hope there

Some Climate Change Resources

2009-08-25T11:17:00.004+12:00

Planet Green have put together a page of resources that can be used to talk about climate change in school. It's a little Americanised, however there are a few stunning video clips that are available to be watched for free via the wonderful Internet. The page is here - http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/educators-resources-climate-change.html?campaign=th_weekly_nl

Who wants to go for a walk through an eco town?

2009-08-25T10:51:00.002+12:00

I've stumbled across a really nice short animation about what it may be like to walk through a fururistic "Eco-Town". It's a little tongue in cheek and perfect to watch over a quick cuppa.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/video/2009/jul/17/ecotowns-carbon-emissions

More Building Inspiration

2009-08-22T08:53:00.002+12:00

Another super cool building article on Tree Hugger......This time it's a floating spaceframe home....check it out here....

Keep New Zealand Beautiful Week

2009-08-21T13:18:00.005+12:00

Keep New Zealand Beautiful Week is fast approaching. This year it is happening between 4th-11th September You can get involved along with the rest of New Zealand and join in the national clean-up. You can do a clean-up at anytime during the week. Get a group together. Friends, classmates, workmates. Your group can be any size large or small. Choose an area you enjoy spending time in and has

350 Aotearoa Tour Hits Wanaka

2009-08-20T10:22:00.011+12:00

Hopefully by now most of you reading this will have heard of the 350 campaign. Just in case.....350 is a global grass roots movement, started by Bill McKibben, to not only raise awareness about climate change and global warming but to also inspire real action, by us, the residents of planet Earth to do something about the causes of the problems we have to deal with now and the future. So why 350?

New Enviroschools Kit Workshop

2009-08-18T12:36:00.004+12:00

The Otago Enviroschools team held the first of the workshops to introduce teachers to the new Enviroschools kit. It was held at the awesome Skeggs Gallery and we had a fantastic attendance from primary and secondary schools around the Dunedin area.Tania and Davina lead a great session exploring the major parts of the new kit. As I'm sure you've noticed the new kit only covers the theme area Me in

Eco-Hut Challenge - Building Experts

2009-08-14T14:09:00.006+12:00

One of the great ways to find out about sustainable building is to get the experts in. We are very lucky here in Wanaka to have some fabulous sustainable building experts working at Sustainable Wanaka. Sophie, Jess and Audrey came down to Wanaka Primary to talk to the students about sustainability, how it relates to building and in turn how that fits in with developing a sustainable

Worm Farming at Queenstown Primary

2009-08-14T13:30:00.004+12:00

I've been really lucky to do lots of work at Queenstown Primary this year. One of the topics that I've done heaps of work on has been with the middle syndicate and them learning about how to deal with organic waste. One of the things they've investigated is worm farms. Now that the weather is finally warming up it was time last week to get their worm farm up and running.As usual the children were

Sketch Up Club - Wanaka Primary

2009-08-14T13:11:00.003+12:00

As part of their work on the Eco-Hut challenge the students at Wanaka Primary have started Sketch Up Club during Tuesday lunch times. In case you haven't heard of Sketch Up, it's a 3D modelling software package from Google that you can download for free. You can get it here.This is a great way to try out any potential designs you may have for anything, from houses to pencils. Once you have gotten

Eco-Hut Inspiration

2009-08-04T08:06:00.002+12:00

I thought I'd start adding some links to some Eco-Hut Challenge inspirational web pages. I've just come across and amazing slide show on Tree Hugger. Édouard François appears to design houses / dwellings / buildings with a real integration into nature and using some natural building materials. Pop on over to Tree Hugger to have look.

Full Staff Meetings

2009-07-28T10:40:00.002+12:00

I had a very busy start to term 3, full staff meetings at Arrowtown and Wanaka Primaries. They were awesome. We explored the guiding principals of Enviroschools using the scrapbooks and had a look through the new kit. Wanaka have signed up to the Eco-Hut Challenge and are also enquiring into building this term. So with them we pulled apart the Eco-Hut challenge tool kit and had a look at the

Climate Change Forum Queenstown

2009-07-13T10:58:00.000+12:00

On Friday night in Queenstown I went to a climate change forum arranged by the government. Dr. Nick Smith, the Minister for the Environment was giving a talk and afterwards the attendees were encouraged to make comments, ask questions and more importantly offer solutions on how we, the people of New Zealand can help tackle climate change issues. The meeting was, in my opinion, very well attended

Wanaka Wastebusters - The Doco!

2009-07-02T15:40:00.003+12:00

Wanaka Wastebusters have been privileged to have super star film maker Tim Pierce, direct, shoot, edit and release a fabulous short film about how we work. It's true to Tim's form, beautifully shot & cut and gives a fantastic behind the scenes look at what goes on down at the corner of Riverbank and Ballantyne Roads. Once you've watched this I'm sure you'll want to pop on over to his web site

Enviroschools in 4 Minutes

2009-06-23T08:59:00.004+12:00

I'm sure that some of you will be aware tha tthe National government has announced that it will soon be cutting the funding for Enviroschools. We are sure that this has been a simple oversight which will be turned around as soon as the politicians realise what the implications will be.In the mean time, a talented young film maker from Dunedin, Nick Holmes, took time out of his life to make a

Oh my goodness.....

2009-06-22T15:03:00.003+12:00

I've jsut realised how long it is since I've made a post here. I hope you don't all think I've been resting up doing nothing.....I wish....well, I don't actually. Anyways the last term has been crazy;The new Enviroschools kit is launched - I travelled to Rotorua to meet with all the other facilitators, regional coordinators and national team to unpack it. If you thought the first kit was an

GetReal - Stop Free Plastic Bags

2009-03-30T14:39:00.005+13:00

I've heard about this new website today - GetReal.GetReal was set up by a bunch of passionate Kiwis who want change. They want better design and less waste. They want companies to use minimal packaging, and to be proud of it. They want packaging that can be recycled back into the same product. To get change, they need your help. Together we can force manufacturers and

Packaging Free Lunch

2009-03-26T11:24:00.008+13:00

Packaging free lunches are a real big way to vastly reduce the waste produced in schools. We all want that to happen don't we? However, maybe getting started just isn't quite as easy at it seems.One of the easiest ways to 'get it' is to have a look at a few pictures. So here we go. Below are a few pictures of what my and a few of my friend's packaging free lunches look like. They are easy to

Enviroschools Otago Regional Hui

2009-03-19T15:40:00.008+13:00

On Tuesday I went to Dunedin for the Otago Regional Hui. This years theme was 'Water for Life'. With this theme in mind the event was run at Mount Grand Water Treatment Station, Arae Te Uru Marae and the Kaikorai stream. As usual it was a fantastic day.Wanaka Primary and Queenstown Primary made the trip over, so our district was very well represented. You guys were awesome. We try to get as much

Wanaka Primary Walking School Bus Features on National TV

2009-03-12T11:59:00.006+13:00

This morning Tamati from TV1 Breakfast came to town. He is currently on a tiki tour of New Zealand visiting various towns who are making the effort to get as many cars off the road as possible.They found Wanaride Share on the Internet and it just snowballed from there. Sophie Ward, the general manager of Sustainable Wanaka did a fantastic job of rounding up all the cool folks in town who use

Queenstown Primary - The Big Picture

2009-03-12T10:08:00.004+13:00

As part of Queenstown Primary's amazing commitment to Enviroschools this year they are keeping me very busy. I've very kindly been asked to visit pretty much every class in school and use the 'Big Picture' from the kit to help explain Sustainability to the students and teachers. This activity is proving to be absolutely fantastic .I've adapted this activity to work across lots of different age

Reuse Wanaka Primary

2009-03-11T15:25:00.004+13:00

Week 4 was Wanaka Primary's turn for the Zero Waste Education Reuse unit and boy were these guys going to keep me busy. I had five classes from the middle school to visit and they were awesome.We spent the week having very lively and active discussions. I was really impressed with the knowledge that these students already had about Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. AND, whilst I'm on this topic, during

Bike Wise Breakfast

2009-02-25T13:03:00.006+13:00

On Thursday morning the people of Wanaka were invited to ride their bike to work or school and call into the Lake Wanaka Center to receive a free breakfast. Bike Wise is, to quote their website "....is a nationally coordinated event that promotes safety and biking as a sustainable, fun, healthy and enjoyable means of transport. Bike Wise is funded by the NZ Transport Agency and the Ministry of

Compost - Wanaka Primary

2009-02-20T15:43:00.004+13:00

This week I was invited to go to Wanaka Primary to teach the Zero Waste Education Compost unit to the senior school. We had a ball. I taught five classes each day and they were awesome. Such good thinkers and learners, so many questions and even more enthusiasm. You guys wore me out!This was by far the hottest week I've taught this unit and it was incredible to be able to do so much of it

Glad Wrap Snails - Queenstown Primary

2009-02-20T14:44:00.007+13:00

Mrs. Fergusson set about doing a school wide experiment without anyone knowing. She had a plan afoot and decided a little secrecy was perhaps the best way of going about. She wanted to show the school the problem they have with Glad Warp and their lunches.The idea was that her class was collecting Glad Wrap for an art project. They collected as much Glad Wrap as they could lay their hands on from

Brainstorming Sustainable - An Intorodcution to Enviroschools

2009-02-20T14:27:00.003+13:00

I was invited to Rooms 16 & 17 to help them kick off their year and school wide focus on Enviroschools. What an offer. We decided one of the best ways to do this was to explore the idea of the word 'Sustainable' & 'Sustainability' and what it meant to the children.We had so much fun. The children were awesome and we soon got into the nitty gritty of what the word meant to them. Where things came

Happy New Year!

2009-02-05T08:51:00.005+13:00

After an awesome Christmas with my family I'm back to the sunshine and warm weather.2009 is looking like it is going to be a very busy year for me and our schools. Makarora Primary, Wanaka Primary and Queenstown Primary are focusing their attention towards their continued Enviroschools work. So look out everyone, there is going to be even more amazing work done this year.I'm also working with

Makarora Site Visit

2008-12-05T12:21:00.003+13:00

Wanaka Wastebusters played host to Makarora School on a very rainy day. They were on a trip into to town anyway and asked if they could come and have a look around site to see what happens to all of their recycling.Needless to say, despite the rain, we had a great time. Utilising the big window in the shop we were able to look at the processing area and discuss what goes on in the shelter. We

Vision Mapping of a Sensory Kind in Makarora

2008-12-05T11:10:00.003+13:00

After my year summary meeting at Hawea Flat school I headed up the road to Makarora for the afternoon. Makarora are a fairly new Enviroschool and are really embracing the program.They've made a vision map and are slowly but surely starting to add to their pool of knowledge. One of the areas they really want to improve are the school grounds. So we set about recording some of the more sensory

Look at us, we've got a bike track!

2008-12-03T12:03:00.003+13:00

Yesterday I went up to Hawea Flat to do the end of year summary for their Enviroschools work and look what I found...........doesn't it look sick? So if you don't ride a bike then you may not quite appreciate how good this is, but take it from me this is one amazing addition to the school playgrounds and community. The children are buzzing about it. They are currently going through various safety

Congratulations Hawea Flat - Our newest Silver Enviroschool

2008-11-26T14:27:00.003+13:00

Congratulations Hawea Flat! This year they put in an entry to receive the Silver Enviroschools award and guess what? They got it!!!! Well done everyone up there. These awards aren't given out to any old Enviroschool, lots of work goes into achieving this level of recognition.I've heard a rumor that the bike track is complete and the children have started to ride it, I'm looking forward to having

Step-by-Step Instruction On How To Make A Bottle Rocket Car

2008-11-19T15:32:00.019+13:00