Environmental Award Open with New Categories

 

The 2010 Hawke’s Bay Environmental Awards are open for entries, and this year there are four award categories.

The awards are supported jointly by Hastings District Council, Napier City Council and Hawke's Bay Regional Council to celebrate Hawke’s Bay people doing great work around the region enhancing and protecting our natural resources.  

The closing date for nominations and entries is 15 July. 

The categories this year are: individual/ family, community (including not for profits, marae, neighbourhoods), environmental education (for schools and educational institutions) and rural project & lifestyle property.  

The revised rural projects category is aimed at lifestyle properties and small farms managing sustainable cropping or other activities, as well as single projects on larger farms, such as a wetland or farm pond enhancement, bush recovery or water management.

The category changes were made in response to shift to mainstream environmental awareness and action in Hawke’s Bay.

“The environment awards is, to some extent, a victim of its own success, with much more environmental care and sustainable practice now evident around the region,” says the environmental awards working group chairman, Napier City Councillors Dave Pipe. 

“We once gave awards for recycling efforts that are now considered normal and routine.  So the bar has been lifted and there is greater opportunity in events like the Green Ribbon Awards for high performers to gain national recognition. 

“By putting greater focus on the community’s action, the awards should reveal the great ideas and valuable voluntary work that people, marae, community organisations, schools and neighbourhoods are doing in our towns, rural areas and natural spaces.  We look forward to meeting entrants and seeing their interesting projects,” says Awards joint working group chairman, Napier City Councillor Dave Pipe.

He adds that he hopes that the rural category changes will encourage more people on smaller blocks to enter where they can now be judged against people running similar scale operations.

Farmers will be able to enter the Ballance sponsored Farm Environment Awards, as the Regional Council is working with the awards organisation and Gisborne District Council to bring this event to the region.  These new awards will be run by a separate board and will launch later this year.

Instead of the business and product/ service categories, businesses are this year encouraged to enter the Hawke’s Bay Chamber of Commerce Business Awards.  Hawke’s Bay Regional Council is supporting a new Business Innovation Award to recognise the local businesses with a view to the region’s future economic development and environmental sustainability. 

“These awards are well-respected by the business community who increasingly are focussing their energy and investment on new thinking, new ideas and smarter ways of moving ahead, sustainably -  and that is worth recognising,” said Regional Council communications manager, Drew Broadley. 

This is the ninth year of the Hawke’s Bay Environmental Awards scheme which is a combined Council effort and covers the whole region.  Councillors from each supporting council judge the entries.

An Award winner from last year, Taikura Rudolf Steiner School, was a finalist in the Green Ribbon Awards this year which are decided by the Minister for the Environment.

Entry forms and guidelines for entering are available on Hawke's Bay Regional Council’s website on www.hbrc.govt.nz, or contact the awards coordinators at Hastings District Council, Napier City Council or Hawke's Bay Regional Council.  

The award ceremony is on 15 October, 6.00pm at Lindisfarne College Auditorium in Hastings.  The keynote speaker for this free community event will be announced closer to the event.