SEA WEEK – KAUPAPA MOANA

We decided to be Kaitiakitanga of our sea and make an effort to do our bit to clean Maraetai Beach close to KiNZ Mission Heights.  The team decided to organise the beach clean-up to correspond with the New Zealand Sea Week 2018 on the 10th of March.

 

TOIORA TE MOANA, TOIORA TE TANGATA

The theme for Sea Week for 2018 is Toiora te Moana, Toiora te Tangata – Healthy Seas, Healthy people.

Sea Week focuses on learning from the sea.  It is a way to excite and inspire New Zealanders to renew their connection with the sea and learn more about our ocean, its habitat, its characteristics and inhabitants.

At mat time, our tamariki have been learning about the kind of rubbish that goes into the sea which affects the marine ecosystem. Audio-visual presentations and pictures have made an impact on our tamariki. One child chose to attend the beach clean-up instead of going to his soccer game because he felt so strongly about saving the turtles who become sick by eating the plastic bags that go into the sea.

We had a wonderful turnout of very enthusiastic tamariki and their whānau. With gloves on, the collection started and the tamariki were excited to show their finds, which varied from balloons, pieces of glass, plastics, underwear, cans, fishing lines, pieces of metal and more.

 

 

TAKING ACTION

All the rubbish was collected and brought back to KiNZ. We sorted the rubbish into general and recyclable rubbish.

Do you know what was the biggest contributor to the inorganic collection?  It was plastics in many forms. As KiNZ Mission Heights is a Bronze Enviroschool, we intend to discuss this with our tamariki and come up with actions that can be implemented at our centre to reduce the use of plastic bags and plastics.