

Google Analytics tells us that our readership has been increasing about 30% every month for the last 4 months. Beyond that, we’ve had great feedback from the school programmes we’ve developed and the YMCA Connecting Families Day resource recovery project. It appears that our network is now building through the blogroll on permaculture.geek.nz, and BioPak Australia’s newsletter and Facebook page. And finally, we are in the process of applying for funding to replicate the huge success at the YMCA event at other community events in Wanganui.
It is not easy being green, but sometimes it feels awfully good.
Peace, Estwing
After excellent feedback on our first schools programme, The Science of Sustainability, we have developed a new programme we’re calling Eco-Maths. This will be delivered to primary and intermediate teachers in the form of a professional development session in about a month. Here is a preview:
Hey teachers…
Want to include sustainability in your lessons but don’t know how?
Want to engage students in real life application of maths?
This is your chance. This training session uses eco-design and home renovation to teach mathematical concepts through saving energy and money.
Topics covered:
Area, Volume, Ratios, Percents, Units, Graphing, Rates, and More.
Date and Time: TBA
Location: TBA
Peace and Pythagorus, Estwing
Here at the The E.C.O. School, we are all about sharing eco-thrifty solutions with you. So here’s one that we’ve been using for the past few years, e-cards. There’s nothing more eco-and thrifty than doing away with the waste and cost of sending out paper holiday cards. Plus, if you’re anything like us and don’t quite have your paper cards done yet, e-cards are a great way to cover up your procrastination. “No, I’m not behind any deadlines, I’ve just timed it perfectly to send an e-card this year”. So have we my friends, so have we.
So, in the spirit giving this holiday season, we are offering one loyal reader a custom designed e-card. It can be a holiday card, birth announcement, invitation, or other card of your choice.
Here are some examples of e-cards I’ve designed for us, and some that I designed for Jen Lebo Photography:
If you win this contest you will be able to send me some ideas about what you like and I will design a custom design just for you. You’ll send me any photos you’d like to use and will receive a pdf file of the finished design that can be attached to an email easily (or even sent off to a printer if you so choose – we won’t judge).
There are several ways to enter this contest:
Winner will be chosen at 11:59PM EST on December 9th. Good Luck!
-June Cleverer
WINNER: The winner of this contest was Liz! Sorry that I forgot to publicly announce the winner.
You may ask yourself: well… how did I get here?
Some times, when I sit back and take stock, I just have to wonder. How did we end up in this hundred year old villa, in a decile-one neighborhood, on the shores of a tiny island in the pacific? Is this my beautiful house? Is this my beautiful wife… err, husband? And where is that large automobile anyway?
A bus pass and folding bike will have to suffice for now.
Here we are at the start of another huge leap of faith. Having just married, we grew out of the shotgun shack-truck and have found ourselves a bit further down the west coast of lovely Aotearoa. Whanganui will be our home for the near future as we embark on a project in building community, building awareness, and re-building a house.
This project is about the process as much as it is about the final product. While we aim to end up with a beautiful, warm home that has benefited from an eco-thrifty renovation, we also aim to explore the junction of where our ideas of eco and thrifty meet the council’s ideas on safety codes and inspections. We aim to learn heaps, and pass that knowledge onto others as we dispel the myths of consumption-based green marketing campaigns and prove that you don’t need to be rich to be green. Eco-thrifty is indeed a possibility.
Once in a lifetime…
Letting the days go by…
-June Cleverer