School Kids, Art and The Environment

This week I popped down to an art activation aimed to encourage primary students to think about the environment and sustainabiltiy and I can honestly say I felt lucky to be involved!

We all hung out and created art work for over an hour.  We used simpe paint pensto draw, but its the kids who added the magic.

The brains behind the activation is XERO. Every year 260,000 tonnes of waste concrete ends up in New Zealand landfill (enough to build seven Sky Towers).  One of Xero’s customers is a small business called Envirocon, which has developed a way to collect and recycle the waste into blocks that can be used in construction.

What Xero has done this week has used Envirocon blocks to install a large x-shaped wall at Wynyard Quarter (next to The Viaduct Event Centre) and invited primary school children from St Joseph’s to create art designs that reflect sustainability messages.  It’s so cool and look at the colours!!  They are simply vibrant.

I think my favourite part was reading all the messages they came up with to reflect sustainability.

No wait; my favourite part was finding out that once the activation wraps up this Monday, Xero is going to transport the whole thing to St Joseph Primary school to serve as a permanent, colourful reminder of the need to look after the environment.

I can’t stress enough that you yourself, along with some friends and family should pop down there and paint something on the walls yourself!  You’re more than welcome to, infact XERO and Envirocon encourage it.

Envirocon is the first and only construction-related product stewardship scheme accredited under the waste minimisation act.  It’s goal is to help the construction industry become more sustainable and in a way that isn’t cost-prohibitive.  The ultimate goal is zero conrete waste going to landfil!  The least we can do is head down to Wynyard Quarter and have some fun creating a master piece inorder to show our support.

If you have any question feel free to ask me, and if you are heading down let me know what time as I’m going to pop down again myself.

Talk soon

Erin x