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From patching your clothes to cycling more, here are some tips on how to be more sustainable (Image: Getty/Tina Tiller)
From patching your clothes to cycling more, here are some tips on how to be more sustainable (Image: Getty/Tina Tiller)

PartnersApril 6, 2023

Non-annoying advice on how to be more sustainable

From patching your clothes to cycling more, here are some tips on how to be more sustainable (Image: Getty/Tina Tiller)
From patching your clothes to cycling more, here are some tips on how to be more sustainable (Image: Getty/Tina Tiller)

Achieving complete sustainability may be an unattainable goal, but there are ways in which we can all make small changes to be part of a bigger sustainability movement. Olivia Sisson asked one expert for their tips.

Everything “comes back” full circle at some stage. Crocs, once ridiculed, have gone couture. Adidas returned from the void, and so did cloth nappies. A friend’s brother and his partner were set on using them – but after two weeks with bubs, they thought “forget it”. Turns out the sustainable option sometimes just isn’t… sustainable.

Tips on how to live more sustainably range from reusing your straw to rearranging your entire life, without much in between. In terms of actually useful, non-annoying sustainability advice, a chat with Kayleigh Appleton from The Compost Collective turned up heaps. She had recommendations for almost every area of life…

(Image: Archi Banal)

Kai

There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit in this area (pun intended). 

First and foremost, eat up. You can compost food waste but prevention of waste in the first place is always the most preferred and sustainable outcome. Don’t let your fridge become a graveyard for fresh fruit and veg. The cost of these items is up 23%. Let that stat and sustainability motivate you to eat all the food you buy.

Consider where you buy your kai, too. Supermarkets are convenient, but farmers markets and vege boxes are often more sustainable and cheaper. They offer produce with fewer diesel miles and less packaging – an area in which supermarkets are sometimes not even trying.

A huge amount of food gets wasted by our supermarkets. The minimally blemished but perfectly good to eat food they reject often ends up in landfill. Up to 40% of food doesn’t even leave farms because of these narrow requirements. Companies like Perfectly Imperfect and Wonky Box rescue that kai – check out their vege boxes. 

And download the Foodprint app. Simply put in your location and it will pull up a list of nearby eateries selling off excess stock. Afternoon half-priced pastry? Sign me up.

Also check out all sorts of tips about how to reduce food waste, including tasty recipes, and upcoming workshops at the Love Food Hate Waste website.

A steak sealed in plastic, placed in a plastic tray, wrapped in plastic (Image: Olivia Sisson)

Composting

Of course, we’re only human. Food waste will happen from time to time. However, about 45% of the average Auckland bin is food waste. That waste ends up in landfill, the least preferable and sustainable outcome. There it gets squished up, breaks down without oxygen and emits methane which heats the place up. Dealing to your food waste in a better way is one of the most impactful things you can do – and composting keeps the precious nutrients food scraps contain within our food system. 

So where to start? If you have room, setting up a compost bin is easy. The Compost Collective offers free startup workshops which will answer all your Qs on how to compost like a pro. They’ll also hook you up with big discounts on composting bins and the Bokashi system – a great option if you don’t have heaps of space. 

If composting isn’t for you, many communities have food waste drop off hubs. And in Auckland, you can use the ShareWaste app to book a composter to come pick up your food waste for free. Easy as. 

Single use stuff

Keep Cups are great, but I never seem to have mine with me at the right time. Try making a “reusable pack” instead – a little baggie with reusable cups, containers, cutlery, straws. Leave it in your backpack, your car, at work or anywhere you spend a lot of time. This will help reduce the remembering required.

Single-use biodegradable plastics include claims that they break down quickly into benign end products, but the reality is more complex. (Photo: Getty Images)

Grow your own

With grocery prices soaring, “grow your own” messaging is everywhere. A great option if you have the land and money to make it happen. Even if you do, there can be tons of plastic and other nasties involved, from seedling trays to soil bags and harmful fertilisers. To get growing in a green way, connect with community gardens. They often sell seedlings, materials or can point you towards sustainable suppliers. 

Travel

It’s unlikely that Aotearoa stops travelling. But jumping in a jet even once could offset your Keep Cup use in just a few hours. So how to be mindful in this space? Slow travel could be the answer. Visiting one place, or country, instead of five. And of course, taking your reusable pack with you. 

Clothes

Make them. Mend them. Keep wearing them. The first two are more easily said than done, but local markets and maker spaces around the country like Rekindle can teach you how to mend things, do it for you for a fee, or connect you with someone who can. Leveraging other people’s skills to be more sustainable, rather than relying solely on your own, can be a huge help.

(Photo: Getty Images)

Kids

Kids require a shite ton of stuff. Nappy bags. Toys. A variety of carrying contraptions. This area of life feels like a bit of a minefield on the low impact front. But there are some great resources out there designed to help parents. Like these workshops from Kate Meads on how to make cloth nappies actually work. This directory from Ethically Kate has great recommendations on sustainable baby and pregnancy brands, too.

From clothes to kitchen supplies, Trade Me simply cannot be overlooked. Buying second hand, or selling things you no longer need, is an excellent way to prevent waste.

Pets

Dogs can help keep food scraps out of landfill, too. Recent research suggests that adding some to their diets could even be beneficial. Be sure to research what can and can’t be shared with them though. 

With pets it’s helpful to remember you’re always upstream from someone. And when pet waste gets into our waterways it harms our ecosystems. One parasite found in cat poo is killing Maui and Hectors dolphins. At the least, don’t just leave it there. And if you want to go further, compost pet waste with this easy-to-use system and watch your flowers flourish.

Guilty (Photo: Getty Images)

Work

If you’ve got the option or are vying for it, working from home could reduce your transportation footprint. Especially if you drive. If your boss isn’t convinced that WFH will save the planet, they’re probably right. It’s just one piece of a bigger puzzle. But this excellent paper could help you kickoff conversations in the workplace around reducing impact and creating a WFH plan that actually slashes it.

Get amongst

Keep an eye out for sustainability events in your community. In Auckland, EcoFest is on now until April 16th. There are over 300 events from free home energy advice sessions to mauri noho (conscious living) workshops. And anyone around the motu can jump into The Compost Collective’s free composting workshops via Zoom.

Keep going!
All photos shot on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra
All photos shot on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

PartnersApril 5, 2023

How Light Night brought life back into our biggest city

All photos shot on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra
All photos shot on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

Naomii Seah takes an evening stroll around downtown Auckland and finds a city alight, alive and finding its groove again.

Auckland’s central city is not a common nighttime destination for me – the odd trip to a Britomart eatery, a Viaduct bar or an event at one of the comedy or theatre spaces being the most common exceptions. But events like Light Night bring a whole new energy to the CBD.

It had been a long time since I’d seen the city centre so busy. Everywhere up and down High St by Chancery Square, and around the surrounding narrow lanes, people spilled out of little eateries, chatted from rainbow perches in Freyberg Square, had a beer under the glowing sunset and peered into the window displays of little boutiques, closed since five.


This content was created in partnership with Samsung, and shot on the new Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.  Head out with the pro-grade camera in hand, equipped with a high-resolution sensor and intelligent, light-absorbing pixels, for clear snaps at any hour. Seize the day and capture the night. Find out more here.


On Queen St, the usual hordes were notably well dressed: Gen Zs in their distinctive baggy jeans and tight tops; millennials in floral dresses and polished low heels, others in pressed shirts and designer sunnies for the last of the long summer days. Aotea Square teemed with people enjoying golden hour, and running in between shows and restaurants. On the streets the city was singing. Buskers lined the corners: a guitarist accompanying the violin; a vocalist and their sound-system belting ballads; their backing track the sound of a thousand footsteps and children’s laughter.

To the uninitiated, the scene would look like any other cityscape on a Saturday evening. But to those familiar with the inner city of Tāmaki, the crowds were a mark of something special. People everywhere had come out in force for Light Night, a free arts showcase and a part of the annual Auckland Arts Festival (AAF). 

As I walked along the waterfront toward downtown Auckland, it was hard to miss the festive atmosphere. A group of teens skated along the benches by the restaurant strip, kids tugged on their parents’ arms, and the crowd was thick enough that I had to weave in and out to get through. Although the sun was yet to set, Light Night was already in full swing.

All photos shot on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

Light Night is described as one night where “the visual and live arts collide”, and with events scattered throughout the city there and included dance performances and DJ sets which interacted with the environment and people of the city. Some performances were set on the streets, others in art galleries or exhibition spaces which were open late specially for the night. 

My friends and I stuck to the city centre, where roving performances and DJs were playing through Aotea Square, Q Theatre, the Ellen Melville Centre and the Gus Fisher Gallery on Shortland St. Uptown, there were also roving performances on Karangahape Rd, as well as DJs playing at Studio One Toi Tū and Objectspace. Further afield in Devonport, a drawing workshop and a panel chat was being hosted in a special late night opening of Depot Artspace.

Our first stop was Q Theatre, where dance troupe IDCO was doing a window performance. My friend and I grabbed a couple of passionfruit Pals and sat on the benches outside among a gathering crowd. Before long, the troupe came by in their red jumpsuits, metallic stripes around their shoulders, wrists and waists. They performed through the circular windows, their movements sometimes fluid, and sometimes angular and isolated. A small crowd gathered on the footpath outside. Strangers passing through halted in their tracks to take pictures, or dance along. Two young girls danced along excitedly in front of one window, mirroring the dancer’s movements. Behind them, the crowd cheered them on, the girls’ enthusiasm infectious. 

A proud owner of two left feet myself, I had never attended a dance performance, much less one this interactive. I was reminded of the special fleeting nature of live performances – like being in the audience of a play. Here I was in a crowd of strangers who I’d likely never see again: people I didn’t know and people who didn’t know me. Yet we would share this memory of looking in through the window, watching the dancers’ movements reflected in the glass and the girls’ twirling on the pavement. As one attendee put it, a performance like this was really a way to “interact with the city on a budget… it’s accessible, and I got a beer, which is really joyful.”

As my friend and I walked through Aotea Square to find our next performance, it struck me that “joyful” was a great way to describe the mood of the city that evening. The performances brought people together in a way that felt rare. Especially in the aftermath of so much recent devastation – the floods, Cyclone Gabrielle – having a shared sense of community, finding a shared joy in the arts seemed more crucial than ever before. 

Our next stop was the Gus Fisher Gallery, a grand brick building with an elegant stained glass dome where Dance Plant Collective were doing their pop-up performance among the new exhibition, The Sentiment of Flowers. In a disorienting display of light-up screens featuring flowers, fungi, macroscopic shots of lice, grass, debris and mould, dancers dressed in white flowed through the space with round, golden lamps. The audience lined the walls, watching attentively as the dancers twisted themselves around the singular, fixed point of light that they variously held, hugged, dropped, caressed and lifted. Slow and deliberate, the performance was suggestive of ritual. It was like nothing I’d seen before, and I didn’t quite know what to make of it. But that might well be the point.

All photos shot on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

“Fringe things are important because you can be a bit avant garde – you can take risks,” said Leela, a public programmer and single parent. Leela noted that she often can’t afford to go to ticketed events, both because of the cost and the time it takes from her busy week. Consequently, Leela relies on free events and art shows. 

“I seek out all these free events so I can feel like I’m part of this community that I bust my ass for every day… When you work fifty hours a week, you need to put back in the joy that’s been sucked out.” 

Kirsten and Grace concurred; they were in the audience at the final event of the evening – IDCO’s performance at Ellen Melville. Both working full-time jobs, they noted that an evening of late nights at the galleries meant they were exposed to art and culture that they otherwise wouldn’t have time to see. 

“It was definitely the fact that it was accessible and free that made me prioritise it,” said Kirsten. 

All photos shot on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

IDCO closed out the night with an impressive routine to a crowded Freyberg Square. The steps were as full as I’d ever seen them, and there was a sense of excitement in the crowd. As the troupe closed out their performance, they turned to show the audience the “AAF.co.nz” url cheekily emblazoned across the back of their performance costumes. From the crowd, a cheer rose through the applause – both for the performers, and the end of Light Night. 

With main event of the night winding down, we opted to stick around for a while, picking up some late-evening bites and generally soaking in the vibrant atmosphere that lingered after Light Night drew to a close. Wandering the lower CBD afterwards, taking in surprising artworks as we moved through Fort Street to Britomart and down to the waterfront, I found myself truly looking at the city differently. The sun glowing off high-rise towers had been replaced with moonlight and fluorescents against the warm limestone of our historical buildings. And although the sun had long since set, I left with a warmth in my heart from the joy of being alive, and part of something.

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