Environment – Small steps having an impact

The earlier that habits are instilled, the more likely they are to stick long-term, which is why getting early childhood centres (ECEs) on board with sustainable practices has been a focus for our local environmental group. 

Eco Early Childhood Education is a programme partially funded by the Hibiscus and Bays Local Board that operates under Hibiscus Coast Zero Waste, a charitable environmental trust. The project brings trained facilitators into centres to help with sustainability and zero waste. Sam Imhof, who has been managing the project, has worked with more than 20 local centres over the past four years. Thanks to the local board funding, the programme is free to centres in the area. 

Sam works through a 10-step plan over the course of six months so that centres have support in making real, sustainable change equipped with the knowledge and practices to help reduce and divert waste from landfill. Centred around the Māori concept of kaitiakitanga (guardianship and protection), the programme aims to not only reduce the waste produced by the ECEs, but to instil values of environmental stewardship at an early age. 

The programme begins with an assessment, a first waste audit, staff and family workshops, suggestions to better reduce, reuse and recycle, support in setting up organics diversion, a final waste audit and a final session with the offer of more support, where needed. It involves staff and families in waste reduction and can provide workshops on topics such as composting, alternatives to plastic, food waste reduction and cloth nappies.

Many local ECEs have signed up, and made remarkable progress toward being low-waste centres. As a centre commits to certain practices, or completes steps of the programme, they receive a certificate with badges to mark their achievements. They are awarded for things such as completing waste audits, recycling soft plastics, holding educational workshops for families, swapping to reusable hand towels and nappies, using sustainable resources and more. The two most common actions that centres have taken up, and which have had the greatest impact, are swapping to reusable hand towels and diverting organics. Sam provides reusable handtowels that she sources second-hand, then cuts and overlocks herself. Using them in a centre saves hundreds of single-use paper towels a year. 

Centres are supported to divert their organics from landfills by either setting up collections with City to Farm (which takes food scraps to a local farm for composting and growing food), or establishing an on-site compost. 

Once centres divert one tonne of food scraps from landfill, they receive an award and dedicate their own tree at the City to Farm site. 

If there is anything these tamariki can teach us, it is that building daily habits and taking small steps can have a great impact if we all work together. Info: ecoece.co.nz/services