Editorial: Sense at last
OPINION: For the first time in many years, a commonsense approach is emerging to balance environmental issues with the need for the nation's primary producers to be able to operate effectively.
Lewis Road Creamery is moving to help a South Auckland community in its work to improve the health of a river.
The Wairoa River flows from the Hunua Ranges, through Clevedon and out to the Hauraki Gulf.
Land clearance and urban development have affected it for decades. Loss of native forest has cut into the habitat for wildlife, river banks have eroded and sediment and other pollutants have entered the water. Damming has changed the rivers natural flow.
Lewis Road Creamery, notable for organic milk, will match the public’s first $10,000 in donations to the project.
Georgina Hart, who leads Million Metres at the Sustainable Business Network, says the Wairoa River project is an example of how everyone can act to restore New Zealand’s waterways.
“Businesses that get behind waterway restoration are a help. We can’t leave it to someone else to clean up our rivers.”
Hart says more businesses are giving cash via the Million Metres platform.
Peter Cullinane, the founder of Lewis Road Creamery, says “we want to play our part”.
Along with the money the firm is encouraging its 200,000 followers support the crowdfunding goal and then join in on planting day to dig and plant trees.
The plants and trees will come from Te Whangai Trust, which assists long term unemployed and prisoners to gain work skills at its four nurseries in Auckland.
Million Metres hosts a crowdfunding website for local projects.
It has worked with 45 community groups and landowners and has raised $1.4m to help restore 52km of waterways with 300,000 trees.
Kiwis are wasting less of their food than they were two years ago, and this has been enough to push New Zealand’s total household food waste bill lower, the 2025 Rabobank KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey has found.
OPINION: Sir Lockwood Smith has clearly and succinctly defined what academic freedom is all about, the boundaries around it and the responsibility that goes with this privilege.
DairyNZ says its plantain programme continues to deliver promising results, with new data confirming that modest levels of plantain in pastures reduce nitrogen leaching, offering farmers a practical, science-backed tool to meet environmental goals.
'Common sense' cuts to government red tape will make it easier for New Zealand to deliver safe food to more markets.
Balclutha farmer Renae Martin remembers the moment she fell in love with cows.
Academic freedom is a privilege and it's put at risk when people abuse it.