Pukerua Bay! We have a problem!

Rawhiti Reserve is a dumping area for rubbish. The students of Ra Roa went for a walk with Ted Coates, Gay Hay and Dave from Porirua City Council Education as well as Dagma Pessendorfer.
We discovered a huge amount of dumped rubbish including old water tanks, ovens, plastic, asbestos and green waste.
The children were horrified and felt very sad that a place they could build huts and play in was being treated so badly.
We have decided we are going to do something about it!

Some of the rubbish found!

A map of the areas identified as being used as a dump.

Trip to Trash Palace

Ra Roa and Te Motu were invited to visit Trash Palace, Poly Palace and the Spicer Landfill. The trip was funded by the Porirua City Council and was very educational. Bobby our tour guide was very informative. We learned lots of new things including

• Polystyrene can be recycled into insulation for houses
• Methane and leachate from the landfill is dangerous and is collected and dealt with
• That different plastics have different purposes when they are recycled
• That we should reduce, reduce, reduce, reduce, reuse, reuse and them recycle. 
• Recycling takes energy
• New Zealand produces the equivalent of 1000 buses of rubbish every day! 
• Glass is sorted into colour, Plastic into number and Steel into type for recycling. 

Bobby

Checking out Spicer Landfill

Poly Palace. Made by genius Richard.

Recycling clothing bins

Recycled Eftpos outlets used to sort polystyrene.

The classrooom