Pasifika festival serves up sustainability on a plate
SUPPORTERS of a Dunedin event celebrating of Pacific culture and cuisine have stepped up to the plate in helping make the event more sustainable
Moana Nui Festival, held at Forsyth Barr Stadium tomorrow, will showcase food, performance and music from an array of Pacific nations.
As part of Pacific Trust Otago’s zero waste strategy they had partnered with Res. Awesome to provide reusable crockery and cutlery that would be sterilised.
Res.awesome kiawhakaara Fi Clements said this was one of the bigger projects her business had been a part of, and she was excited to see it go ahead.
‘‘The idea is to cut out singleuse takeaway packaging, because reuse is the most sustainable option,’’ she said.
Ms Clements said they had collected 700 donations of crockery and cutlery for the event, which would be used in the ‘‘Reuseavessel’’ system.
At the festival there would be a table in the middle where patrons could collect reusables to serve their food on, and the they would return the used crockery to the bin station where a team of people would be cleaning and sterilising for further use.
‘‘Really this is about supporting our community to shift away from plastic and disrupting the system we have in place now.’’
Pacific Trust Otago Moana Nui coordinator Stacey Kokaua said she expected this to be the largest event they had done with more than 10,000 people expected through the gates.
There would be different ‘‘villages’’ representing each Pacific nation for patrons to choose which foods they wanted to try, and the stage would host a variety of Pasifika performances and music.
She said the food was incredible, and offered some of her recommendations for people to give a try. The public were also encouraged to bring their own vessels for eating.
‘‘Crab at Tuvalu village, that’s what I’d go for, and get pineapple at the Samoan village, wolffish at the Cook Islands’ village.
‘‘If you want a whole lot of food, the Tongan village [is] like a welloiled catering machine.’’