The Eco Show - Creating Our Future Now

PRESS RELEASE

The Eco Show
Creating our future now
25 - 29 February 2004
Alexander Crescent, Manukau City

We need to live more sustainably: using the earth's resources more carefully, so there will be enough left for many generations to come.

But changing our daily lives can seem too difficult, because often we just don't know what the sustainable options are. Now, help is at hand!

The Eco Show is a five-day annual event with exhibitions, an eco forum, hands-on workshops, demonstrations, tours and an organic food plaza.

The basic principles behind the EcoShow are:

* That all things are connected

* That integration and interconnection are fundamental to sustainability

* That we can and must make appropriate choices now.

Innovative local and international technologies that make sustainable living easy will be showcased, as will numerous practical and economic ways for people to enhance their lives, while caring for their community and the world.

There will be displays, workshops and demonstrations on:

- Maori ways for sustainability, organics, herbs, food and more
- Permaculture design, small and large scale
- Power generation, commercial and do it yourself, hydro, wind and heat
- Composting – including toilets
- Worm farming
- Bee farming enhancements
- Innovative and traditional building techniques, with earth, fibre straw bales, yurts and tipis
- Solar design
- Swimming pool purification through a wetland
- Healthy eating
- Economics and money systems
- Organics: farming, gardening, food, politics
- Seed saving
- Zero waste
- Whole person education
- Working with co-operacy and consensus
- Eco-village design

The Eco Show is being run by a partnership between Permaculture in New Zealand (represented by Living Lightly Ltd) and Integrated Whenua Design Charitable Trust (to ensure Maori participation at all levels of the Eco Show).

The venue is a 10ha site at Alexander Crescent, Manukau City, which is to become the first urban subdivision in Aotearoa to be self sufficient in energy. Its integrated design takes into account the needs of a fully featured community including educational, business, cultural, social and ecological housing components. The Kokiri Trust, which owns the land, intends to be the 'Centre for Alternative Technology' of the South Pacific.

Housing New Zealand are funding the construction of an earth home on site during the Eco Show; HNZ are also retrofitting an older home (donated by Andrews House Movers of Takanini) so that owners of existing homes can learn about energy efficiency, solar heat gain, natural lighting and other healthy home improvements.

Speakers such Teddy Goldsmith (founding editor of The Ecologist magazine), David Holmgren (co-originator, of the Permaculture Concept), Elisabet Sahtouris (evolutionary biologist) and Eva Stenius (of JAK Interest-free Banking Co-op in Sweden) will inspire and challenge as they outline their views on why we must change now for sustainability.

Many innovative New Zealanders will also be speaking, including Dr. Rangimarie Rose Turuki Pere, Joe Polaischer, Robert Mann, Brendan Hoare, Charles Royal, Klaus Bosselmann, Prof Dushko Bogunovich, Deirdre Kent, Blair Anderson, Michael Lawley and Colin McPike.

The Eco Kids area will entertain children and adults alike, with stories, activities, animals, art and games. And the organisers say that the whole Eco Show will be imbued with a sense of fun, co-operation and creativity – as well as tackling the serious issue of sustainability.

ENDS

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