Kapiti Coast’s Green Street Competition – Four Streets, One Prize – the Blog
Rainbow Court & judges
Blog one: By Stacey Gasson
I don’t know what your job’s like, but I’m feeling pretty lucky right now. As the Sustainable Communities Coordinator with Kapiti Coast District Council, I’m in the enviable position of being inspired and challenged by the people I’m supposed to be supporting.
A large part of my job is coordinating the Kapiti Coast’s Greenest Street competition – a nine month competition between four streets from across the Kapiti district. When we first called for registrations for the inaugural competition in August last year, I have to say the response was somewhat understated. A little probing and cold-calling revealed that, in addition to the busy-ness that characterizes life for many of us, few felt ready to volunteer themselves and their neighbours as paragons of green living.
Fair enough. Time to bring in the direct marketing: as I explained to anyone who showed interest, this competition isn’t about who’s got it sorted already. In fact, when we designed the judging criteria it was purposefully weighted to ensure that groups across the spectrum of greenness had a chance.
'Kakariki St'
Competing for a $3000 prize (to be split between a school, charity and street event/item of their choosing), participants started by using a variant of this quiz to measure the average environmental footprint of their street. You can find our version and guide notes here. They’ll re-do the quiz in June 2011 with points evenly split between the final size of their footprint and their relative improvement. Already green? Hmm, might be hard to improve… Not so green? Plenty of easy ways to reduce the footprint then…. Judges are also looking at how they come together as a community, and there’s a final wildcard section to recognize the creative stuff that doesn’t get credited anywhere else. The judging system is here and a background on the competition here, if you’re keen.
That’s the dry bit out of the way. From a slow start, our four streets( Avion Terrace, Raumati Beach; ‘Kakariki St’, Paekakariki; Rainbow Court, Raumati
Avion Tce
South; and TeRoto Rd, Otaki) have totally risen to the challenge. And that’s where Happyzine comes in: not only did Charlotte run our press release calling for entrants, but she offered space for a blog. Given that three of our four streets are already writing their own blogs (and digging up their lawns, housing ex-battery chooks, cooking meals for families with new babies, holding street parties, and replacing their light-bulbs….), that busy-ness issue raised its head again. But I’m so proud of these guys, I wanted to share their exploits with New Zealand, which is why I’m facing my angst about blogging (having already faced the ‘radio interview’ angst) and doing it myself. Over the next few months, you’ll get to meet a different household and project each week: with 58 households involved, I’m spoilt for choice.
More information about the competition can be found on the Council’s website, including the profile and hopes each street wrote as part of their entry and links to their gorgeous blogs. You’ll also see profiles of our lovely judges, and an ever-growing list of ideas and resources that I thought might be useful if one was
Te Roto Rd & judges
looking to reduce an environmental footprint (your suggestions for expanding this are most welcome).
Phew, that’s a lot to try and get into one blog so congratulations on getting this far.
Next week we meet the streets.
Stacey Gasson
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[...] I posted up a very cool blog from the coordinator of Kapiti Coast’s Greenest Street competition – which is taking place on New Zealand’s Kaptiti Coast. Stacey Gasson is [...]