Curious Minds Project

Together with Ōpunake Communities Kindergarten, Sustainable Taranaki is embarking on its new Project “Our Green Ōpunake Journey”. This is one of the four initiatives from the Curious Minds fund supported by Venture Taranaki. Curious Minds works with school and community groups who have questions or ideas that can be explored or tested with science.

Recycling contamination is currently a big concern in the community, as it involved high costs and an increase in waste going to landfill. It is estimated that around 40% of plastic bottles are currently not being recycled due to contamination

“Our Green Ōpunake Journey” seeks to promote better recycling habits in the Ōpunake community while measuring the impact of different approaches to helping people reduce contaminated (dirty) recyclables.

It builds on Sustainable Taranaki’s multi-year behaviour change projects and on innovative waste management work by the South Taranaki District Council, whose expertise will be supporting the community where this trial will run.

ŌK staff and families will, through this project, become researchers and community ambassadors. Our science, education and psychology experts at Sustainable Taranaki will support and guide them to understand and contribute to the experimental design, method execution, and result analysis.

The main goal for the community is to not only reduce the contamination of recycling bins but to also raise awareness on the importance of recycling correctly and in reducing waste in general. For our Curious Minds sponsors, the goal is equipping the community with skills and techniques to purposefully understand the environment around us and the impacts we can make.