Spring Cleaning

What:Envi­ro­tain­ment

Where:Ori­en­tal Parade (Frey­berg Pool/Mural end)

When: 2.30 till 4.00pm Face­book event page

Spring has well and tru­ly sprung but the uni­verse is send­ing mixed mes­sages as usu­al. Lambton Quay is dec­o­rat­ed with slight­ly over-ripe kowhai trees in full bloom; the petals tram­pled into the street by the suits, and what’s left on the trees disheveled by the spring rains. Con­fu­sion reigns, walk­ing down the street one day sans wool­ly hat, think­ing to one­self, “there is noth­ing like Welling­ton on a good day” while look­ing up at the unim­ped­ed blue sky. The next day remem­ber­ing you still haven’t kicked that damn cold, the elec­tion date means tis the sea­son for polit­i­cal hoard­ings to be lit­ter­ing the streets has begun and you real­ly should­n’t be wear­ing open toed shoes yet because it is rain­ing again. Sigh.

How­ev­er, there is noth­ing like a good Spring clean to mark the change of sea­sons as Aotearoa does­n’t pro­vide us with a clear demar­ca­tion. Plen­ty of Welling­to­ni­ans have been clean­ing out their clos­ets and attend­ing clothes swap­ping par­ties. It would­n’t be stretch­ing it to say that clothes swaps are the new com­post­ing. The grow­ing tribe of urban sur­vival­ists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, cheap­skates, dig­ging for vic­to­ry types, crafters with atti­tude etc (I don’t think that the term “hip­pie” real­ly cov­ers it) are part of a wave of chang­ing atti­tudes about the envi­ron­ment. Either that or we are turn­ing into our nanas, in a good way.

The next thing big thing from the hivemind/noos­phere seems to be beach clean ups. It is as if all of those with an envi­ron­men­tal cast of mind have put down their knit­ting in uni­son and exclaimed, “how about we har­ness the pow­er of the inter­net to organ­ise a beach clean up, yes lets!” I have noticed beach clean­ing meet-ups sprout­ing up all over the place.

Via face­book I have man­aged to dou­ble book myself for beach clean­ing tomor­row and on Inter­sect, “the social net­work for young pro­fes­sion­als who care about sus­tain­abil­i­ty” they were also pimp­ing an Ori­en­tal Bay clean up that is part of a stu­den­t’s final year at Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty’s school of Art and Design. Gloves and rub­bish bags are pro­vid­ed and she promis­es the first 50 peo­ple swag bags (reusable earth-day bag) con­tain­ing:

• Free cof­fee from 2 of Welling­tons best cafes Peo­ples Cof­fee and Milk Crate. Oh yes! 
• Lat­est issue mag­a­zine from For­est and Bird.
• Best prac­tice ‘fishing/eating guide’ of New Zealand.
• A biodegrad­able water bot­tle from Life Incor­po­rat­ed
• A one off art piece cre­at­ed for the event (small in nature)

The crew from the face­book group Keep Welling­ton Beau­ti­ful will be meet­ing at the Zephrom­e­ter (cor­ner of Evans Bay and Cob­ham Dri­ve) at 1.30pm if you want to go all out and make a day of it.

Pho­to info: Trea­sure hunt, Lyall Bay beach, Wellington.1975. Evening Post staff pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ref­er­ence num­ber: 1/4–022406‑F Film Neg­a­tive Evening Post Col­lec­tion, Pho­to­graph­ic Archive, Alexan­der Turn­bull Library