Thank you to all the community who supported the Grey Lynn 2030: Waste Away group through the E-Waste Action day held at the Woolworths Grey Lynn carpark on Saturday 21st March.

The event was a great success. An estimated 12-16 tonnes of e-Waste was collected!
Lynn Green says, “We are so happy with the way the collection day went. Absolutely perfect in all ways with brilliant volunteers, good weather and a community which cares about what they are doing with their E-waste.”

Thanks to sponsors: Computer Recycling Ltd, Harvest Wholefoods, Woolworths Grey Lynn, Corporate Signage
Thanks to the many kind hearted and energetic volunteers

For those who missed the day, computer equipment can be taken to:
Computer Recycling Ltd 95 Gavin St, Penrose. Phone 5255518

To contact the Grey Lynn 2030 Waste Away group please email: greylynn2030wasteaway@gmail.com

Our friends at Cycle Action Auckland have just sent out their latest interesting  update. Please have a look or subscribe if you don’t want to miss this in the future.

We are very pleased to announce that Niki Harré will be speaking at our next Grey Lynn 2030 meeting. She is a Pt Chev resident and key member of Transition Pt Chevalier.

Niki Harré is a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland where she has taught social and community psychology for ten years. She is co-editor of the book, Carbon Neutral by 2020: How New Zealanders can Tackle Climate Change.

Niki’s research interests include environmentally sustainable schools, grass-roots activism and psychological well being. Niki is involved in an action research project at Western Springs College.

Niki will be speaking on the following:

How to build a green community

A green community is about those things that make us happy and healthy – clean air, exercise, fresh food, safe transport, natural surroundings and above all, vibrant neighbourhoods. This talk will focus on how positive psychology can be used to build such a community.

Niki will discuss the importance of a positive atmosphere for inspiring creativity, how storytelling and films can be used to set goals, the power of “walking the talk” and why being well organised is vital to success.

To get you in the mood, here is an article by Niki in this month’s Good magazine on Does Being Green make you Happy?

Here is a clip from MotherJones about the Obama’s new vege garden.

Michelle Obama: We’re also working on a wonderful new garden project.

Oprah: Will kids get to visit the garden?

Michelle Obama: We want to use it as a point of education, to talk about health and how delicious it is to eat fresh food, and how you can take that food and make it part of a healthy diet. You know, the tomato that’s from your garden tastes very different from one that isn’t. And peas – what is it like to eat peas in season? So we want the White House to be a place of education and awareness. And hopefully kids will be interested because there are kids living here.

But it is certainly worth a try. I spent a large portion of my Vermont childhood picking pesticide-free beans and chards, so I understand a direct relationship with vegetables and dirt helps people understand what food is and what we put into our bodies. I appreciate that Obama is trying. And who knows, with 18 acres to farm and only five mouths to feed, the White House will surely produce a surplus. Maybe 1600 Pennsylvania Ave will turn out some good tomatoes for DC to eat.

The local food people will love this. The hope is that the first
family will encourage Americans to give up those wasteful lawns and plant gardens again, thus diminishing American fossil fuel usage and unhealthy agricultural practices.

It is a little more complicated than that, however. The White House lawns have long been more decorative than
practical. Michael Pollan, a longtime proponent of turning acres of the White House into a garden, once requested a list of pesticides used on the grounds. He was refused.

But vegetable gardens at the White House are nothing new. John Adams, the building’s first resident, added one in 1800. By the early twentieth century the West end of the White House (where the Oval Office is today) consisted of a rambling series of greenhouses that supplied plants to the president’s family all year round.

The Obama garden would not be the first time the president’s family used the grounds to lend a hand to the nation, either. Woodrow Wilson let sheep graze on the South Lawn to produce wool during World War I. Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden in 1943.

Even more recently, Jimmy Carter planted herbs between the flowers. Since the Clinton administration, the staff has harvested food from a vegetable garden on the roof.

The new garden is a nice idea, but it runs the risk of coming off a little hollow, since the White House is famous for toothless token gestures. When Jacqueline Kennedy wanted to express concern about poverty in West Virginia, she ordered new White House glasses from the Morgantown Glassware factory. The company still closed in 1971, and West Virginia continues to have the third lowest per capita income in the country.

Later, President Carter installed solar panels, an energy solution wildly outside of the average American’s price range, during the energy crisis, a move critics panned extensively. Reagan removed the solar panels immediately after he moved in.

Symbolic changes in the White House only work when accompanied by effective policy fixes. Let’s see what happens the next time the farm bill rolls around. At this point an Obama-led food revolution is doubtful, particularly given the president’s selection of agribusiness-crony Tom Vilsack as agriculture secretary.

On Tuesday 17 March a group of inspired and enthusiastic Mt Albert Community members gathered at Gladstone Primary School and formed a steering group that will grow Transition Towns Mt Albert.  We shared some ideas about how we feel about community, ecology, and the future, as well as discussing some of the many opportunities we can see as we make connections.

We have a movie night on April 8.  Details on the Transition Towns site.

Anyone interested in being part of Transition Towns Mt Albert can contact Jo or Karen at mtalberttt@gmail.com

Go Lynn and the Waste Away Group! Watch out for the story in on Page 2 of this week’s Central Leader.

Group powers up for e-waste day

By Scott Morgan

Photo: Jason Oxenham
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT: Grey Lynn 2030 members Kim Maree and Lynn Green are organising an e-waste action day that will see old computer equipment collected for recycling rather than being dumped in landfills.
Computer equipment can be dropped off at the Woolworths carpark on Richmond Rd between 9am and 3pm and volunteers will remove the items from people’s cars.

Old computer equipment will be carted off by the truckload this weekend if Lynn Green and Kim Maree get their way.

The pair are part of the Grey Lynn 2030 group, which is organising an e-waste action day on Saturday.

People can take their old computers to the Woolworths Grey Lynn carpark where they will be collected for free, taken to a computer recycling centre and disassembled, with the parts either reused or recycled.

Ms Green, of Westmere, says the group has organised the e-waste day to give people an alternative to putting out their old computers in the upcoming inorganic collection.

“We want to keep the e-waste off the street to stop it getting damaged and the hazardous chemicals going into the stormwater,” she says.

Ms Maree says the group came up with the idea for the event after one of its members saw a documentary that showed how e-waste from western countries ended up in the Third World.

The Freemans Bay resident says it hasn’t been an easy project to organise.

“It’s been a big learning curve for us.”

The group estimates between one and 10 percent of households in Grey Lynn and surrounding areas will want to get rid of their e-waste on the day, which could create several tonnes of equipment to haul away.

Computerrecycling.co.nz owner Graeme Torckler, who will be disposing of the collected computers, says the Grey Lynn 2030 group is doing a great thing for the environment.

“I wish there were more groups doing it. It’s fantastic how much you can keep out of the landfill.”

He says it’s better to sell computer parts on to firms that use them straight away, rather than recycling them.

“By reducing the footprint of what has to be returned to its base form, the better for everyone.”

Grey Lynn 2030 is involved in a number of other projects to help achieve its goal to develop a sustainable local community by 2030.

They include supporting the Grey Lynn farmers market, a gardening group, reducing plastic bags used in the area and food waste recycling.