2016 plans

Our meetings have resumed Thursdays lunchtimes in the library.

Our projects this year:

• Solar Panels – keep an eye as the building as get built
• Earth Hour – Officially 19th March, we’ll do it every last Friday of every month as last year, so first one is 26th Feb.
• Recycling art – Max is keen to take it on board again. We’ll refine the competition with last year’s learning.
• Paper recycling – no brainer
• Tree Planting – not sure we will have enough trees but keen to do it again
• Litter / bins, trying again, differently (no bin did not work!)
• Film  OutlookforSomeday
• Other: Our facebook page has reached 100 Likes!

We welcome new members!

MAC Team Green 2013

Today’s full-on meeting

Tautuku Regeneration South

Four students and 2 teachers went there last week-end. Sarah and Maddy summarised the trip: very good, 41 people. Talks about poverty, environment, community, sustainability, and how to make a change. Many ideas, many things learnt. Met lots of people. Was vegetarian. There was a confidence activity, a vision workshop, and a performance to do in the evening. The whanau meetings were an excellent way to meet other people.

Girls even went for a swim, and took each other for a shark. AAAAHHH!

Photos to follow soon…

Projects management

We have two ongoing projects, and new projects coming, and it is difficult to keep track of them as a group. So we decide on people responsible for each project, a team to help them, a list of the actions and a timeframe for reporting.  Click here to view the Project Planner.

Tee Shirt Campaign

NZ Fashion designer Miranda Brown has a new collection of tee shirts, aimed at raising awareness about our marine world and the human impact on the ocean, while raising funds for environmental organisations.

Our daily choices have an impact on the seas. FIND PHOTOS

• 10,000 people die every year due to the pesticides used in conventional cotton.

• Dyes commonly used for clothing are toxic and kill when they reach waters.

• Non-degradable materials that end up in the seas also kill animals.

• Goods that are made cheaply contribute to people’s poverty, even kids exploitation.

• Materials that travel a lot from the source to the production and to the selling point use up oil and contribute to climate change.

These t-shirts are 100% organic, use vegetable dyes, and are biodegradable. They are made inBalinear the cotton fields, by workers paid fair wages. And we will follow how they are made. LINK TO VIDEO STREAM to add

Buy these T-shirt on the website www.freethesea.co.nz   (from $45 to $55), choose the shape, the colour, the design, and choose to donate to MAC Team Green at the checkout.

Ordering closes 31st May. They will be delivered in October, ready for summer or to offer for Christmas.

Every T-shirt sold will earn Team Green $5 which is going towards our school compost bins and to start saving for solar panels to be installed.

List of local medias  (Attention: Need to contact Laura Williamson, as Public Relation person of the college)

Messenger messenger@printit.co.nz

Wanaka Sun editor@thewanakasun.co.nz

Radio Wanaka

Wanakalive http://www.wanakalive.com/

The News   stu.oldham@alliedpress.co.nz

Mountain scene:  http://www.scene.co.nz/8359a1.page

Last but not least:

Unit Standard Level 2 Credits 3 Describe household conservation strategies

We were approached by Mr Bates for our expertise in the subject.

Do we know any way to reuse household paper, plastic, glass and metals? We are offered to pass the unit and gain the credits, as we would have all the answers in our heads…

http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/nqfdocs/units/doc/12359.doc  Open the document to see details

March 2012

A busy month!

Finalising Food Waste recycling:

• Talk in Year 7 assembly ;
• Setting up bins and posters in rooms ;
• Writing a bunch of notices

Earth Hour 31st March

• Assembly: Preparing a slide-show and speech for assembly, asking for a time
• New Zealand website: http://www.wwf.org.nz/earth_hour/ International website http://www.earthhour.org/
• Posters, stickers, notices

Recycling campaign

• Aim: teaching students to use the bins correctly
• Game for year 7-8
• Assembly ?

We will be receiving our trees for the Paper4 Trees scheme. We will plant some if we want, tools to organise

Food Waste Recycling

We are proposing a food waste recycling system. Eventually we would like the whole school to take part, but first we want to trial it with the year 7/8 classes first.

We will supply an empty paint bucket with a lid and handle for every class to use as a bin. These will have to be emptied every one or two days – as it will start to smell – in the compost bins that will be placed near the gardens. When the bucket gets emptied, they also need a quick wash out.

We thought that we could have a competition. Every 2-3 weeks we would award lollys to the class that, by our standards, has the best looked after bin. We will monitor this by spot checks and by asking the teachers their opinions.

We will make a poster for what can go in it and what can’t and talk at Year Level to explain it to the students.

Be a leader of change

Last year, Team Green members successfully implemented a school-wide paper recycling habit. Creating the possibility (i.e. Green boxes) and informing the school students and staff, and repeating, repeating… Result: Hardly no paper in “normal bins” ; Result 2: our school has won and planted more than 25 trees. Well done to all for your participation. Effort? Not a big effort, is it?

This year, we want to tackle organic waste recycling, that is food thrown away in normal bins.

We will campaign to reduce food waste, we will install compost bins, worm farms and teach everybody in the school how to use them. 
Expected results: delicious compost for the school edible gardens, less waste, raised awareness, etc…

But first, we are going to attend “Regeneration“, a full day of workshops, skills and action planning for global and local issues, leadership, values and generosity, social change and climate change.

You too can be a leader of change.
Join us every Thursday lunchtime in the library.

World Enviro Day at Mount Aspiring College

World Environment Day is 5th June 2010, have a look at the official website and think on what YOU CAN DO on this Saturday : http://www.unep.org/wed/2010/english/

Here at the college during the long whanau on Tuesday 8th June, we will turn all the lights and computers off and we will provide each whanau group with an “Enviro-pack” which will contain:

•  a sign to put on the paper bins in their room and the explanatory sign on how to use it
• a transport survey
• a packed lunch survey

 Details will be decided during  next meeeting, Thursday 27th May lunchtime in the library (Eating in the library is authorised to the participants and at the time of the meeting).

Our projects this term

Finalizing Paper Recycling

All the classrooms and offices in the school now have a green bin for paper. Yeah!
We now need to:

• Laminate the posters and paste them onto the boxes
• Write “Instructions for paper recycling”, to publish in the newsletter and paste on the walls of the classrooms.
• Write some snippets in the daily notices to remind people about paper recycling.

Mac Team Green Campaign

We started to create a poster to say we exist and what we do. We will then put it up on the several boards of the school.

We also start to collect visual facts or striking articles to explain why sustainability is important and we will put these up on the boards too.

We have gathered 10 snippets from The Story of Stuff site  to publish weekly in the newsletter.

Successful meeting

We welcomed today Lucy, from The News, who took a photo of our Recycling Poster Competition winners -to be officially announced and awarded next Wednesday.

We also had a visit by Ivy, from Wastebusters . She brought some materials (posters, bags, gloves, Get Real survey) for Keep New Zealand Beautiful Clean up week. We will pull up our sleeves and collect rubbish from Lismore Park, Wednesday 9th Sept P5 – Carol to confirm. Check out the Grime Scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjXmlYhtpzM, by Wanaka Wastebusters!

350 planning

Ivy announced that Wastebusters were also planning to plant trees for the 350 action day (23rd-24th Oct) and is offering to associate with us, with people from the community coming to our tree planting session to help.
We could also liaise with Wanaka Primary School who will be our neighbour soon.
Don, the college’s caretaker, is working on the plantation areas, as well as an edible garden area 🙂
Nia and Samantha have been working on the speech for assembly. Florence’s presentation is ready.

We need 120 trees: Te Kakano has already offered some young trees. We can ask around us, nursery, gardeners… We expect many people in the community will want to support the project. Donations can be acknowledged in our blog, so it is an advertising opportunity as well as a green gesture!

350 plans at MAC

Following the visit by the 350 crew, we want to contribute to this global event. Click here to see what it is about!

• We want our action to be visible, create a WOW factor, have a positive outcome
• We want to involve as many students as possible because it also means it raises their awareness
• We want our event to have a low ecological footprint.

Our two main ideas would be:

Contribute to the local tree planting 350 project, organising a house competition, like “how many trees does your whanau manage to plant in a given time“, preferably planted in a shape of 350.

Going to Mt Iron (local mountain, popular and close to the college) to set up a banner showing <-350 Us Here Now! It could also be a house competition, each participant earning points for his house.