Food for Tomorrow’s Children

A Mangere Bridge local of 40 years, Yvonne Thomas is clearly one of our community’s “waste champions”.  She says her head “bubbles” at night with ideas for the Auckland Teaching Garden, which she runs with Mona Nimmo behind the old school house on Kirkbride Rd, Mangere.  The pair have been involved with the garden for the past five years, turning it from weed-ridden Council wasteland into a highly productive and fertile area, producing food for dozens of gardeners and their families.  The gardens are open to the general public and plots are currently available over the summer period for people wanting to try out gardening for themselves, with support and mentoring from Yvonne and Mona.  The longer-term plots now have a waitlist, which shows how popular the gardens are with the current batch of growers, many of whom travel across Auckland to garden there.

An inspiration for how to bring new life to ‘rubbish’, the garden is full of re-loved, re-purposed and up-cycled materials.  Old tyres have been turned into raised garden beds.  Fencing has become support for beans.  Old power poles have been used to construct garden edging.  The garden receives deliveries of old, unwanted potted seedlings from Zealandia, buckets from the airport, and waste tofu, for the gardeners to use.  Almost no money has changed hands in the development of the gardens.  “Don’t just look at something - see it,” says Yvonne of her approach to making use of waste. 

Yvonne hopes people’s experience with the gardens will help them to assimilate old-fashioned values of patience and respect, “for self, parents, the land and what we have in New Zealand”.  She sees the gardens as a resource for the future and the children of today, where people can “learn from someone who does it”. There are huge benefits for people who spend time in gardens, with improvements in mental and physical health and social wellbeing.  She believes the garden is a safe, therapeutic place for people who come there. 

As productive as the garden is already, Yvonne still has big plans!  She would love to see a food forest developed at the site, providing an opportunity for children to see how fruit is grown and to learn when to pick it.  She wants to see the outdoor kitchen used for cooking workshops and a pizza oven to be constructed on the site.  Yvonne would like to set up an area to encourage people to use a Bokashi composting system at home.  The gardens would be an ideal site for people to drop off their Bokashi product if they don’t have space at home to put it.

It’s incredible to see what Yvonne and Mona have achieved in such a short space of time, with very limited resources.  Their story is truly inspirational and a perfect example of what it means to be WasteWise and caring.   Their work provides a model for reducing waste in our community, through growing our own food and re-using and adding value to the resources that are already around us, rather than buying new each time something is needed.

To apply for a plot over the summer, to offer a resource that the gardens may be able to use, or to volunteer your time, please contact Yvonne on 0274997006.       

Where does our rubbish go?

Ever wondered where our rubbish goes after it gets picked up from the kerbside by a rubbish truck?  15 Mangere Bridge residents got the opportunity to follow the trail of “where all our rubbish disappears to” last week, when they took part in a Council-organised trip to the Waitakere Transfer Station.  Participants were collected by bus from Mangere Bridge, joining other interested people from around South Auckland, and taken to the Station located off Lincoln Rd. 

Once there, they received a presentation by Learning Centre Manager Marissa Oakley-Browne, who talked about the rubbish that comes into the station, what happens to it there, and where it goes next.  Participants learnt that this site is one of 23 in Auckland which serve as initial drop off points for rubbish destined for landfill.  During the visit, trucks rolled in one after another, dropping off waste onto a large pile.  This pile is then loaded onto an even larger truck, which takes everything to one of four current landfill sites in the Auckland region.

Marissa explained how landfills work, how much rubbish we contribute to them each week (see picture below) and why it is so important that we all work to keep as much out of landfill as possible. Many people found it an “eye-opening” experience to see for themselves that our waste doesn’t just “disappear” when it leaves our property.

On the bright side, Waitakere Transfer Station is one of the few sites in Auckland that incorporates resource recovery into its handling of waste, providing a model for how this could be done in other parts of Auckland as well.  Trip participants were able to visit the well-organised on-site shop which sells goods recovered from the waste stream; anything from bikes to musical instruments to lawn mowers.  The shop is a real treasure trove and proves that one person’s trash certainly can be someone else’s treasure!

The trip was an informative day out for the Mangere Bridge folk who attended, many of whom were children.  Eight year old Jasmine Swords reported that “ït was really really fun" and said she learnt that “if you sort out the rubbish into different piles there will be less rubbish to be put out”. The boys who attended the trip were particularly inspired by the large pile of salvaged reusable wood.  Jasmine’s mother Kathy felt that attending the trip caused her to “think about what she puts into the rubbish”.  Others enjoyed connecting with people from around South Auckland who were interested in waste issues as well.

The Council is planning future community trips to the Transfer Station as well as to the Visy recycling plant in Onehunga and Living Earth composting facility on Puketutu Island.  If you would like to hear about upcoming trips, please email your contact details to justineskilling@gmail.com and I’ll let you know what’s coming up.