January 4th, 2011

Waiheke Island Day! This is one of the days on the trip that I was looking forward to most. We tried to catch the 8:00 am ferry to the island but because of the holiday schedule it didn’t leave until 9:00 am so we rode over to Devenport for breakfast. Following breakfast we hopped back on the ferry and cruised on to Waiheke Island. When we got to the island we rented scooters to cruise around the island. We had tried to set up site visits for our time on the island for the past few weeks but because of the holiday we were unable to get anything set up and had to settle for just scootering around the island.

After dropping our bags off at our hotel we set off to see the island. The areas of New Zealand that I had seen up to this point were amazing but this island was above and beyond anything I had seen. Everything was incredibly gorgeous and the scooters were a blast to ride around once we got comfortable with riding on the opposite side of the road.

While we weren’t able to visit any sustainable sites on our visit we did get some education on sustainability on the island from the owner of our hotel. He told us that virtually every building on the island was on a septic system and collected their rainwater. He also explained the rainwater system that was being used at the place we were staying and a number of other sustainable practices that they use including the home growth of some of their food and the use of all environmentally friendly cleaning products. It was a very informative discussion that gave our group a good first hand look at how some New Zealand natives are living sustainably and reducing their impact on their beautiful surrounding environment.

We were also able to discuss some sustainability issues during dinner. Loretta Burns posed the question of how to get the community involved in sustainable efforts and I think it is a question that everyone involved with sustainable work needs to consider. Loretta works with at-risk kids in an economically depressed part of Ft. Worth and was asking for advice on how to get people to start living sustainable when they are currently just trying to survive. There were quite a few opinions given on the topic but in the end I think we all agreed that there is no simple answer to this question and that low income areas are probably some of the hardest places to get people to live more sustainably. Each area and arena that you try to bring sustainable practices in to is going to be different and will have its own set of unique challenges. I think the big keys to getting a sustainable program started are the act of starting it and then educating the people involved. Regardless of how much activity you start with it can start to snowball if the people get involved and see that living sustainable doesn’t involve a huge amount of effort. This growth can be even greater if the people involved are educated on the effect of living sustainable and how they can do their part. That being said, I think that trying to incorporate sustainability is a mostly uphill battle that takes a lot of time and effort from the coordinator or leader to be successful, especially in the early stages.

All in all is was a fantastic day that was made even better by the first hand encounter with sustainable living in the very place that we were staying.