Liz Stolwyk at the Sort Yourself Section during the Maadi Cup.
Over 9000 students, three rubbish bins
It is hard enough as a parent to get your child to recycle, well try over 9000 secondary school students to do it over a week’s long rowing competition.
Then do it again for successive national and international events.
That was the job completed by volunteers led by the manager of Lake Karāpiro – and Waipā’s deputy mayor – Liz Stolwyk.
After years of trialling with different ways as well as spending money on skip bins, she believes she may have come up with a formula that “makes so much sense” and will not only be used for future events at the lake but also be incorporated into events around New Zealand known as the “Zero Waste Plan”.
It has been trialled at the North Island and Maadi Cup secondary school rowing competitions, then again at the two Dragon Boat festivals at Karāpiro.
The Zero Waste Plan centres on a “Sort yourself Station”, a regular drop zone. At Maadi all schools used it from 2-6pm each day. Students sorted their recycled material as well as general rubbish gathered over the day and placed it in marked bin.
The station was manned by volunteers to ensure the users got it right.
At the same time, while Karāpiro was packed for Maadi there were just three public rubbish bins on the entire site – so just as the student were adjusting, so too were the adults.
Stolwyk says she has been working for 18 years to come up with the right solution to rubbish and recycling, and after events in recent weeks, believes she is well on course,
Succeed, she says, and it will be her greatest triumph as manager of the site.
- Additional reporting – Roy Pilott
