Photo: RNZ
Sustainable hot tubs, a lost penguin returning home and a kai basket feeding 800 people a week are among this week's feel-good stories from RNZ.
Swanndri buried to show wool returns to nature
Middlemarch farmers Gus and Tara helped split the Swanni into three pieces and buried each in the ground at their farm the Wandle. Photo: SUPPLIED/SWANNDRI
An experiment burying a 50-year-old Swanndri bush shirt in the ground shows the ability of strong wool to return to nature at the end of its life.
New Zealand merino producers Gus Bar and Tara Dwyer first buried an old Swanndri in 2022 to see how it would degrade over time. "It degraded really fast actually which is incredible for something that was so durable; it's been worn regularly for 50 years," they said.
Worms were moving through the fabric, eating it and returning those nutrients to the soil. The experiment shows how useful strong wool could be while also being gentle on the planet.
Making hot tubs more sustainable
Wool insulation in an Outdoor Gravity NZ hot tub prototype. Photo: SUPPLIED/Outdoor Gravity NZ
A Bay of Plenty tourism company is on a mission to make locally made hot tubs more environmentally friendly - with the help of New Zealand wool.
Outdoor Gravity New Zealand manager David Akers said the hot tubs originally had to be dumped in a landfill at the end of their lives. The company then decided to manufacture its own hot tubs featuring materials like recycled native timber, hemp fibres and wool. He hoped the spas could soon be scaled up and sold domestically and possibly even internationally.
Antarctic penguin heading home
A lost Adélie penguin is hopefully on her way home. Photo: Supplied / Wellington Zoo
A little lost Adélie penguin turned up on Petone Beach last month suffering from heat stress. She is now swimming south (hopefully) after being released into the Cook Strait this week.
She leapt from her cage into the water - like diving off an ice shelf. Wellington Zoo staff, who have been caring for the bird, said she "took off in the right direction straight away, ready to make a dent in her journey back home to Antarctica" - about 3000km away.
Local food basket providing kai for 800 people a week
Some of the volunteers at the Food Basket CHB. Photo: Alexa Cook/RNZ
The Food Basket CHB was founded by Central Hawke's Bay wahine Mel King seven years ago. It collects leftover groceries from supermarkets to feed the community and stop tonnes of food from going into landfill.
Inspired by Pōneke's Free Store, the operation now has 40 volunteers, and has grown to include cooking classes, gardening and frozen meals for the elderly and ill. In the past year the group has rescued nearly 230,000kg of food from landfill, and turned it into more than 1.3 million free meals.
Food documentary tells tasty tales from Sri Lanka
Mother Tongue traces the food supply chain through Sri Lanka. Photo: Phil Vine
Film-maker Carl Naus had relocated from Auckland to Ōtepoti to start a co-operative café, when he met Bhagya Janethri Herath at one of the cafe's Sri Lankan homestyle banquets. Baghya was born in Colombo. Carl's mum is from Sri Lanka. A friendship was born and soon, a documentary team blossomed.
Mother Tongue is due out next month. It follows Carl as he travels to Sri Lanka, following the food supply chain, with wild goose chases for elusive spices, hilarious scenes with Bhagya trying her hand at making local dishes and eye-opening stories of those who make the ingredients served in New Zealand.
Collective aims to revive Wellington's night life
A huge focus for Froth is making sure their dance spaces are safe for everyone to be themselves and have fun. Photo: Supplied
A collective of young people fuelled with the desire to "get goofy" are trying to revive Wellington's night life. Froth Entertainment - named to reflect their fizzing dance parties - first sprang up in a student flat in 2019. The aim was to create safe dance spaces where people could let go for a night, be themselves and live for the moment.
Five years later, the Froth crew has graduated to staple Wellington venues like San Fran, Valhalla and 121. "All different walks of life live here and we want to give everyone an opportunity to come out and have some fun," Froth member Graham Dickie said.