Grey Lynn 2030 Chair’s report 2015

Phil Goff (Mayor of Auckland), Pippa Coom (local WDHB) and Colinda Rowe (Grey Lynn Waste Away) on BYOB 2017 day in Grey Lynn

Chair’s Report 2015

It has been another active year for Grey Lynn 2030.

The Car Boot Market, under the expert organization and marketing of Suzanne, is humming along and in fact the November market attracted a record number of applications … too many for the available spaces! The Car Boot Market is held on the last Sunday of the month in the RSC car park in Francis Street and is exclusively for second hand goods – this is one of our waste reduction initiatives and has been going for over two years now. Thanks again Suzanne for your work in running this – it provides the Trust some much needed income to fund our activities.

The Waste Away group has remained active this year with a continued presence at the Grey Lynn Farmers Market – having a stall at the market with a volunteer rostered on each week gives us a great touch point to engage with the local community, and the sales of our reusable cups, bags, sandwich wraps as well as worm farms and bokashi buckets gives us some income to fund our activities. A big thank you to Lynn Green for always being there to set up the stall and to take care of stock ordering and banking – it is much appreciated.

One of Waste Away’s main activities for the year was Plastic Bag free July – this is the second year we have run activities during the month of July to encourage people to shun single use plastic bags in favour of reusable options. We had a plastic bag free day on July 3 rd and encouraged all retailers in the Grey Lynn area to refrain from using single use plastic bags on this day. Our team were out and about on the day handing out giveaways (kindly donated by Ecostore and Rethink bags) to shoppers outside Farro and Countdown that were using reusable bags.

We also had an installation at the corner of Williamson Ave and Great North Rd to highlight the number of single use plastic bag used each year by each New Zealander – 250! – and the damage these do, in particular to our marine environment.

We are very encouraged by the fact that Farro has begun charging a levy for plastic bags and the Grey Lynn Farmers Market has gone completely plastic bag free – we hope that others will follow!

Waste Away members have been involved and supportive of both the Auckland Council Working Group that has been set up to look at how to reduce plastic bag usage in Auckland as well as the Green Party’s initiatives around this subject. We have written to our local MP’s to ask for their support and we are already formulating plans for activities for Plastic Bag Free July next year!

GL2030 was granted some funding earlier in the year from the Auckland Council’s WMIF fund in order to engage Envision consultant Matthew Luxon to work with us on developing our ideas on how we can be involved with the Auckland Council plans for a Resource Recovery Network – we have come a long way with our plans and are thrilled to have just been awarded further funding through WMIF with which to set up a trial Resource Recovery Centre in our area. We now need to further develop these plans and get this initiative off the ground in the months ahead. Setting up a small scale Resource Recovery Centre now will give us some valuable experience and put us in good stead to tender for the Council Central Resource Recovery Facility which we expect to happen in a year or two.

Our thanks go to Fionna and the Wilton Street Gardens for such a wonderful space to be able to hold our annual AGM, the garden is looking fantastic and great to see the Wilton St honey for sale at the Farmers Market!

Our focus next year will continue on in the space of waste reduction and we hope to make some exciting things happen in the Resource Recovery space!

My thanks to my fellow trustees who work hard to keep Grey Lynn 2030 moving forward and continually exploring new opportunities to make our ‘hood’ a great and sustainable place to live!

Colinda Rowe, Chair, Grey Lynn 2030 December 2015