Sustainability
At Wild + Love we understand that a bright future for our little ones means we need to make changes to the way we do things individually, as a village and as a community. It means we have a response-ability, before it’s too late, to ensure that in getting what we need now for ourselves, we do not compromise the accessibility to resources for our tamariki in their future.
How do we practise this at Wild + Love?
We are on a journey!
We have a goal to be a little more sustainable each and every day individually, as a village and encouraging this within our community.
We recognise that there will always be something more we can learn and something we can do to be more sustainable as the world changes.
We are learning ourselves and teaching our tamariki to responsibly adapt to our environment and doing the necessary tasks (below) to nurture and respect this beautiful world for our tamariki.
We believe what you appreciate appreciates and our hope is that our efforts at the village will in turn ripple out to homes, the community and then the world.
In-house Chef
Our wonderful Maggie is often the first beautiful face you will see as you walk into Wild + Love with our kitchen at the heart and entrance of our Village. Maggie’s passion for and excellence in providing nutritious and delicious meals comes from her experience as the senior tutor in one of South Africa’s biggest cheffing schools. Having grown up in South Africa Maggie has a natural connection to land and animals and with this comes a longing for nurturing of the environment. Maggie brings a passion for sustainability to Wild + Love and works together with our plant whisperer, Sarah to ensure our vegetarian menu evolves with the seasons crop and with our tamariki’s maturing palettes. We are very lucky that Maggie has chosen Pukekohe as her home with her husband and little boy who is in our Seedlings room.
Plant Whisperer
On your way inside say hello to our wonderful Sarah who you will often see out and about in our garden. Sarah grew up on a beautiful farm with an abundance of fruit trees, where she shared with great joy in the endless free snacks available as a young tamariki. This is where her passion for and connection with the land and seasons began and has lead her to us at Wild + Love where we share in these values. Sarah is currently expanding her lifelong knowledge even further by studying for her permaculture certificate. Our kaiako, tamariki and whānau benefit hugely from Sarah bringing back new practices, learnings and tips and tricks to share with us all. It is clear to see Sarah’s passion and drive to create an environment lush with flora and fauna when you take a look at our vegetable garden and play spaces. Come and see!
Sourcing from suppliers with a sustainability mindset
Nature
We believe nature is one of our best teachers and observing it is an incredibly nourishing way to learn for everyone. So, we surround ourselves and our tamariki in as much biodiversity of flora as we can. This in turn brings local fauna to our beautiful garden for our tamariki and ourselves to enjoy and learn from.
Composting, Worm Farms & Bokashi Bins
The food scraps from our kitchens, rooms and villagers lunches all go into our worm farms, bokashi bins or composting. We are in the process of creating a bigger space for composting bins and a worm farm more accessible to our tamariki where we hope to teach them about sustainable food waste systems in a fun and safe environment.
Garden-to-plate
As a village we aim to grow as much of our own food as we can. Sarah works in the garden naturally navigating the microclimate of our area, and the ever changing weather in our seasons, to make the most of our space to grow organic produce for our tamariki. This is an ongoing journey because no two seasons are ever quite the same. While Maggie’s efforts are in designing and making our vegetarian menu. Ensuring all the nutritional needs of our tamariki are met with fresh fruits and vegetables, beans & pulses, seeds and dairy. Our menu style is as much as possible deconstructed meals. This provides space for our tamariki to pick and choose their own ingredients each kai time. Over time gaining confidence to try new things with out fear of being hungry if they don’t like an ingredient the first few times.
Reduce, Reuse & Recycle
Together we aim to reduce as much waste as we can. We do this when we: – buy in bulk (reducing our packaging waste) – process our own food scraps (sending less to landfill) – purchase products/toys that are robust and re-usable (meaning they last longer being less breakable and can be reused even after they have finished their time with us at the village) The product packaging we cannot yet avoid purchasing we do our best to reuse for arts and crafts or recycle.