Environment savers come south
Whether you live alone or have a family of eight, affordable ways to save the environment are just one, or two, workshops away.
Two Sustainable Taranaki workshops are coming to South Taranaki in November for the first time after all their success in New Plymouth.
One of the workshops looks at composting, worm farms and mulching and the other at toxicfree cleaning products.
‘‘The community really wanted to look at composting systems because the green waste bins are not there any more,’’ Erin Strampel, the workshops coordinator, said. ‘‘So we thought we’d do one in O¯ pu¯ nake.’’
Dee Turner, the facilitator for the workshop and a Taranaki Environmental Education Trust trustee, said she looked at an affordable, easy way to compost.
‘‘It’s for the home composter,’’ Turner said. ’’It’s looking at lots of different techniques that will suit the size of people’s gardens and the amount of waste that comes out of their kitchen.’’
Turner, who has been running workshops similar to this for 12 years, said a lot of people looked at composting and said it looked too hard.
‘‘I say to people if they use the technique that I show them, no matter how big their compost, it’s going to work 100 per cent every time,’’ she said.
‘‘And it’s going to come out smelling sweet and they’re going to be able to grow a garden from it.’’
‘‘It's looking at lots of different techniques.’’
Dee Turner
The toxic-free cleaning products workshop has been popular too, Strampel said.
‘‘The facilitator Krystel Watts, she’s got a family of six kids,’’ she said.
’’She kind of looked at the products that she was using in the home and didn’t know what half of them were and that’s not really a safe environment for six kids.’’
Watts, of Ha¯ wera, started making her own products, which she calls Watts Good Creations, and now she sells them and shares them.
The workshop teaches people how to create toxic-free products, and the participants will walk away with testers too.
The composting workshop takes place on November 18 in O¯ pu¯ nake and costs $5 to attend. The toxic-free cleaning product workshop takes place on November 11 in Ha¯ wera - it costs $12.
Tickets can be bought online at www.sustainabletaranaki.org.nz.