Carfree transports – simply no better protection (for the environment)

What are you doing tomor­row? I hope it involves walk­ing, or tak­ing the bus, or stay­ing at home in bed all day. Why? Because it’s World Car Free Day.

You can find out more on the Gov­erne­ment’s new sus­tain­ab­il­ity portal:

Liv­ing sus­tain­ably means liv­ing smarter. Through this site you’ll learn how to live smarter, reduce your impacts on the envir­on­ment, and save money. You’ll find inform­a­tion to help you make import­ant choices about how you use fuel, elec­tri­city and water and what to do with your rub­bish.

And if you recog­nise the joke in the title of this post, per­haps you might like to con­sider switch­ing to an organ­ic cot­ton altern­at­ive – or a moon cup?

Didja feel that one?

Well, did you?

More info once every oth­er man and his dog stops ham­mer­ing the GeoN­et web­site.

Update. Well, there ya go: a 4.8 shake, focal point 50km deep, 30km west of Pori­rua, out in Cook Strait. A decent rattle.

(And if you did feel it, report your exper­i­ence here. Do your bit for sci­ence.)

Something 4 the weekend

If you’ve become all fest­iv­alled out recently, or, like this Wel­ling­tonista seem to find the whole thing slid­ing by you without seem­ing to make any impact des­pite best inten­tions oth­er­wise, then take heart: life does con­tin­ue else­where. For example, this week­end, the sub­urb­an envir­on­ment­al­ist can get their car’s emis­sions checked at: […] the West­pac Sta­di­um […]

win by weeding

If you are a mem­ber of the Region­al Coun­cil’s Be the Dif­fer­ence pro­gram then you’ll be aware of their new pro­mo­tion. If not, then of course you should join (hint: it’s free). Be the Dif­fer­ence are offer­ing a prize draw of a garden makeover worth $3,000 for mem­bers who send them pho­tos of the dodgy […]

Geckos and skinks

The Wel­ling­tonista has been going for a while now, yet there does not seem to be any men­tion of that unique Wel­ling­ton insti­tu­tion, the Karori Wild­life Sanc­tu­ary, a large fenced-off and pre­d­at­or-free “island” in a val­ley beside Karori. We must apo­lo­gise for this lapse. And make up for it by sug­gest­ing an out­ing this week­end. […]

Botanic Gardens’ Playground Closed…

A notice was dropped in our let­ter­box the oth­er day inform­ing us that the play­ground in the gar­dens would be closed for the next 3 weeks or so, while 6 ancient pines were removed. The coun­cil stated that it regret­ted the need to remove these trees as they were much loved, espe­cially the mag­ni­fi­cent spe­ci­men […]

Think Big

The Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil is call­ing for new ideas for pro­jects that could be fun­ded by the Plim­mer Bequest – a bequest for beau­ti­fy­ing Wel­ling­ton’s bays, beaches and reserves. The Ori­ent­al Bay Beach devel­op­ment was the last pro­ject to be fun­ded by the bequest. Pro­jects that would be con­sidered include plant­ing trees, water fea­tures, scen­ic […]

Rata Planting begins on Tinakori Hill

About 1200 aging pine trees were removed dur­ing the recent Tinakori Hill clean up, but over the next five years, Pro­ject Crim­son and the Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil will be plant­ing around 7500 north­ern rata (met­ros­ider­os robusta). North­ern rata are indi­gen­ous to the Wel­ling­ton area and live for hun­dreds of years. The first 1500 baby trees […]

When the Wind Blows

Meridi­an Energy have announced plans for a new wind farm at and around Quartz Hill, near Makara. With around 70 tur­bines planned for the farm, and each one of those three times big­ger than the one on Brook­lyn, there’s the poten­tial for 210 mega­watts of power to be pro­duced – enough for 100000 house­holds, or, […]

Be The Difference: We believe in recycling

The Wel­ling­ton­ist office (pent­house, with pan­or­amic har­bour views, and a helipad to which James & Nat­alie get dropped off from their weekly com­mute from Bar­ba­dos… the rest of us park our match­ing porsches in the sub­ter­ranean car­park down­stairs…) received this email today. It said to pass it on… and since we think it’s a worthy […]