WHAT WE DO …

First and foremost what Sustainable Whanganui Trust volunteers do is keep the SW office open for business.

Sustainable Whanganui office

The SW office is located at 23 Drews Avenue. It serves as the administration office for the Trust and houses the Eco-Refill Station, ReUse Academy, Predator Free Whanganui Trap Library, with Green Bikes down the laneway at the back of the building.

Eco-refills are now available from the SW office. Bring your own bottle or container to fill or swap, or have one of ours. There are 8 Ecostore personal and home-cleaning products available, plus bicarbonate of soda and white vinegar. At great prices!

The ReUse Academy is a collection of items which can be recycled, repurposed, and reused, In our new Drews Avenue premises we’re starting small with jars, fabric and plant pots. We’ll soon expand as we get organised and more space becomes available. More information on the Resources page.

COMMUNITY PROJECTS, SERVICES, EVENTS and ACTIVITIES

As the SW office is Sustainable Whanganui Trust’s meeting place, it is the command centre for all the various activities we undertake.

Greening Whanganui (formerly Fruit Trees in Schools or FTiS) started in 2005 when the HEHA fruit in school programme was about to end, and with the realisation that schools needed to have their own fruit trees. With funding from Council and PowerCo, FTiS had been going strong since then with over 60 schools in the Whanganui region taking part. A wide variety of fruit and nut trees are available for schools to select from, and SW volunteers do the preparation, help with planting and education, and return for pruning and after-care support as you can see in this slideshow. Greening Whanganui is an expansion of the original programme into community centres, churches, marae as well as kura and schools. As well fruit and nut trees – veg gardens and native trees can be planted.

Zero Waste is another of SWT’s activities. Small and large events in the region benefit from our Zero Waste educator and team taking care of the recycling using the recycling trailer and/or gazebo with recycling station. The Zero Waste team successfully diverted from landfill over 90% of waste from the 2013 Masters Games (which attracted 7000 participants and supporters!) and saved the Masters Games organisers money in the process.

Adopt-A-Plot is a community garden initiative.

Sustainable Schools assists in the development of vegetables gardens at schools/kura/ECEs.

We do monthly Creative Kids sessions, school holiday programmes, events and festivals aplenty.

Sustainable Whanganui applied for and was awarded a WDC Community Contract which it used to commission this mural for the Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre. Created by local artist/designer Cecelia Kumeroa (IHI Design Studio) it incorporates many local taonga and motifs.

Sustainable Whanganui advocates to local and regional Council and government on matters of the environment and sustainability.

The Plastic Free Whanganui (PFW) group sits snugly under the Sustainable Whanganui umbrella. This group’s focus is, obviously, freeing Whanganui from plastic pollution and educating to reduce consumption of plastic and seek alternatives to plastic. These are the guys who strung 2000 plastic bags along the river boardwalk to illustrate how many single-use plastic bags left the four main Whanganui supermarkets in one hour (bag count done in November 2016). One of PFW’s successful projects involved setting up a sewing workshop at Whanganui Prison which has made over 6,300 Inside>Out cloth shopping bags and donated to the community. PFW received support from Council to add a new Sustainable Business category to the Whanganui Business Awards.