Community award

BEN WATSON

KEEPING GREEN: Barb Cooper is the founder of the Paremoremo Community Group, which won an Auckland Regional Council environment award.

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IT ALL started when Barb Cooper got the Paremoremo community together to look after the environment.

Now the Paremoremo Community Group has just been awarded a sustainable communities award at the Auckland Regional Council environment awards.

Since the group formed, a community garden has been established, a new bus service started and a pest-free project set up with 65 households to eradicate pests on their properties.

Ms Cooper says one of her friends who lived in South Africa told her about the idea of community environment groups in 2007.

Together, Ms Cooper and North Shore City Council education officer Kate Jackson formed a thriving group.

Residents are invited to take part in workshops on composting, worm farms, gardening, good nutrition and stream protection.

"One man wanted to see fruit trees at the school so the kids could take fruit home.

"It just takes one person for an idea to take off," Ms Cooper says.

She is a former teacher, and has always been an advocate for the environment.

"I was the teacher telling the children to pick up their rubbish on the playground. I grew up on a farm. You learn not to waste and that never leaves you," she says.

One of the group's newest initiatives is the Naturally Smarter Homes Project. Ms Cooper, who is a real estate agent and in charge of the initiative, says it encourages homeowners to highlight naturally smarter choices they have already made within their homes.

She visits people taking part and suggests environmentally friendly choices that could be made. The information will be collected for other residents to use.

New Zealand is far behind in having environmentally friendly homes, she suggests.

Her own house, which has just been built, has environmentally friendly features such as a solar panel, high insulation, low-flow shower heads and thermal drapes.

The supreme winner of the Auckland Regional Council awards was the Vision Waitakere Gardens Retirement Village.

- © Fairfax NZ News