In the heart of Palmerston North, the Wholegrain Organics cafe and store boasts a bright, welcoming atmosphere on one of the city’s busiest streets. While it may be best known for its delicious plant-based pizzas, pasta and baking made from wholegrain flours milled on-site from largely locally sourced grains, behind all this lies an organisation devoted to so much more than a wholesome meal.

All of Wholegrain Organics‘ profits go to their community outreach and education arm, Hands-On Food. They run food cooking workshops for 12-19 year olds, where participants learn comprehensive skills in preparing and cooking wholesome, nutritionally balanced meals, as well as serving and selling their creations to the public.

Wholegrain Organics has more recently been developing organic gardens around Palmerston North to supply their cafe and sell fresh organic produce at local markets. The Hands-On Food programme has now expanded to gardening to complete the student’s garden-to-table food learning experience, and Wholegrain Organics are expanding this model with the development of a substantial garden at a local school.

In this podcast, we talk to Robert Hall, owner of Wholegrain Organics, about how heath and nutrition, community outreach and education, and environmental sustainability and resilience all come together in their work.

Are you an engineer interested in knowing more or getting involved? Consider becoming a member of GATE.

In this podcast, we talk with Katrina about why she’s so passionate about soil, on how edible gardening and composting contributes to holistic wellbeing, the benefits of keeping things local and community focused, and whether modern society can allow us to transition towards a life that is more connected to the land, soil and food around us.

NB: Our conversation with Katrina touched on the upcoming food scrap collection being rolled out across Auckland. Since recording this podcast Auckland Council have announced they will be expanding their kerbside food scrap collection service and that what is collected will be processed with anaerobic digestion. In Katrina’s view this will not help grow a local food system in suburban Auckland.

In our eyes, Tyne Nelson is one of New Zealand’s unsung heroes, who has built her life around the principle of working on behalf of Papatūānuku, taking direct actions to heal the land and to be a voice for the whenua (the land), the ngahere (the forest) and the rākau (plants). She’s also passionate about building connections between different communities in order to foster the collaboration we desperately need right now to heal our human and planetary ecosystems.

Tyne is a multi-talented, interdisciplinary human who weaves together loads of different mahi (work). She’s both a student and practitioner of Rongoā Maori, mentored by the legendary Robert McGowan or Pa McGowan (who you’ll hear more about in this podcast). As a contractor, she supports the Hawkes Bay Regional Council to deliver their Predator Free Hawkes Bay programme through working on Maori engagement and community research. She also supports Pa McGowan in his work for Ngā Whenua Rāhui, a funding programme that helps to protect biodiversity and remnant bush on Maori land, while upholding mātauranga maori, tikanga and tino rangtiratanga.

Tyne is also extremely passionate about zero waste. She’s the Hawkes Bay regional kaiārahi for Para Kore, a nationwide waste minimisation programme working to normalise zero waste across Māoridom. Para Kore, which means zero waste in Te Reo Māori, supports marae, kohanga, kura and Māori organisations to work towards zero waste.

In this podcast, you’ll hear lots of Māori kupu or words. We’ve created a glossary here that you can refer to if you get stuck at any point.

Glossary of words in Te Reo Māori (in order of appearance in the podcast)

The inimitable Jersey Bob wrote us a song! We’re super stoked about this wonderful gift and wanted to share it with the world! We hope you love it as much as we do <3 Some more of Bob’s music here.

Bob is mutual overlord at Raw Balance in Taupō, with the equally wonderful/joyous, Monika. Whenever we’re in Taupō they’re our go-to peeps for event hosting, and raw and vegan treats (and now theme songs too, yus!) If you’re ever in Taupō, drop in at Raw Balance (we can recommend a coffee with the house-made almond mylk and basically all of the food!!!!)

They tour and do music gigs around the country too – if you’re keen to have them perform at your establishment, drop them a line

Laura “Kitty” Cope is the Creator, Founder, Driving Force Extraordinaire of UYO Aotearoa Cafe Guide (formally, UYOC).

UYO stands for Use Your Own and is a nonprofit cafe directory. Laura launched UYO in late 2017 after seeing both David Attenborough and Jane Goodall in February 2017. The UYO directory showcases New Zealand hospitality businesses who are committed to encouraging customers to BYO cups, containers, bowls, cutlery etc. instead of expecting and accepting single-use disposables. Although UYO was initially focused on encouraging reusable coffee cups, the searchable directory goes way beyond that, sporting a range of badges that cafes/juice bars/eateries can earn to allow the public to see the awesome eco conscious things they’re doing, be that accepting BYO cups or containers, offering a discount to customers that BYO, having responsible food waste practices, willingly refilling personal water flasks for customers and non-customers alike, and so on and so forth. 

As if this wasn’t enough, in 2018, Kristy went further and established EarthSavvy, her own zero waste business, selling zero waste survival items to the people of NZ, and offering a range of in-person zero waste workshops for those living in the Auckland region.

It’s a truism that children are the future, but in the present era of ecological collapse, the pressure on the next generation to revolutionise how humans live on earth is huge. Equipping them for this task is not easy either. 

However, Lesley Ottey, is not one to shy away from a challenge. Through her business, Eco Educate, every day she creates and promotes environmentally-motivated rethink behaviours in over 130 schools and preschools across the Waimakariri and Ashburton Districts in Canterbury.

Though Lesley is a waste educator, she also brings with her a strong practice of community engagement and a deep knowledge of old ways of doing things – from knitting, sewing, foraging through to gardening. She’s helped to set up community gardens, runs waste-free events, regularly appears on local radio, and for 2 years she ran a toy rescue operation where she diverted over 9000 stuffed toys from landfill. 

Lesley’s become quite the public figure, and she’s a force to be reckoned with. In 2018 Eco Educate took out the Environmental Step Change Award in the North Canterbury Business Awards, and was also a finalist for the People’s Choice Award.

In this wide-ranging interview, we talk with Lesley about the work that she does. We focus on why she loves doing environmentally-oriented behaviour change with children specifically, why she is hopeful about the future when these kids take on the helm, and her approach to naysayers and litterers in the community at large. We also chat about her techniques for navigating the boundary between her public and private life, and making sure her dedication to waste minimisation doesn’t lead to burn out.

At the end of March 2019, a heavy storm triggered massive flooding across the West Coast of the South Island, causing infrastructural damage, as well as loss of life. The storm also ripped open a legacy landfill situated on the riverside in Fox Glacier, releasing tonnes of historic rubbish into the river, out to sea, and kilometres up the West Coast’s largely pristine beaches. The flood also swept away large piles of present-day recycling from the local transfer station.

As national attention focused on the infrastructural damage caused by the flood, including the crumbling of the Waiho River Bridge, locals in Okarito were starting to uncover devastating amounts of rubbish strewn across the beaches and up the riverbeds, and to recognise the urgent need for a coordinated cleanup effort. One of these locals, Mike Bilodeau, was the first to start sounding the alarm, taking it upon himself to call upon authorities to acknowledge the scale of the problem and to respond accordingly. Within a short amount of time he found himself in charge of coordinating the volunteer clean-up effort and briefing politicians and other emergency response teams on the ground.

In this podcast, recorded seven weeks on from the day the storm hit, Mike describes to us the nature and scale of the problem caused by the opening of the historic Fox Landfill. Despite the fact that there’s still no end in sight to the clean-up effort or the risk of further pollution, Mike explains how both public attention and central government funds appear to be drying up. He also shares with us what this devastating event can teach us about the responsibility we all share in reducing our waste footprint.

The situation on the West Coast is continually unfolding. To keep yourself updated on the clean-up, follow the South Westland Coastal Cleanup Facebook page. If you’re able to volunteer, have the specialist skills necessary, and can sort yourself out with food and accommodation while on the West Coast, send Mike an email at bilofro@gmail.com.