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Comvita's Sustainability Coordinator To Speak At The NZ Association For Environmental Education Annual Conference

Friday 5 February 2016, 2:05PM

By Beckie Wright

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Comvita’s Sustainability Coordinator will speak at the New Zealand Association for Environmental Education annual conference. At the event held in Auckland on 10 February, Kathy will present her thesis on species-specific environmental education, namely, how people's attitudes towards sharks are influenced by education and nature experience.

Kathy's interest in and dedication to environmental education has seen her move into the recently-established role of Sustainability Coordinator at Comvita, where she'll be responsible for developing and promoting an environmental education programme for the business, based out of Paengaroa Head Office. 

“The environmental education programme will showcase Comvita’s environmental and sustainability initiatives. We’ll use our site here at Paengaroa as an experiential learning environment - connecting local people with nature.

“Comvita does so much good for the environment; we just need to get better at sharing those stories. When Experience Comvita was built, 75 percent of all the project waste material was reused or recycled. On site at Paengaroa we have 40,000 native plantings, we use solar and LED and we treat all of our own waste,” says Kathy.

March is Sustainable Backyards Month in the Bay of Plenty, run by Tauranga’s environment centre, ‘Envirohub’. As part of the initiative, Kathy will host a number of Sustainable Site Saunters at Comvita’s Head Office for the public to learn more about Comvita’s sustainability initiatives.

“Our Sustainable Site Saunters will be held over three Sundays. We’ll start at Experience Comvita and take guests down our native planting pathway before finishing up at our Manuka breeding site.

Kathy has worked at Experience Comvita as an Ambassador for two-and-a-half years, a role she’ll continue in two days a week, making up the other two days of her working week as Sustainability Coordinator. The Mt Maunganui local spends her spare time being productive, including teaching zero waste education in schools locally and volunteering at ARRC Wildlife Trust.

“Education is my passion. I’m interested in sharing knowledge to inspire other people to do good things, whether that’s kids, staff here at Comvita or even local business people. When you know better, you can do better,” says Kathy.

For more information on Comvita and their environmental education programmes, please visit the website at http://www.comvita.co.nz .