This month our Sustainable Business Champion is TGM Creative, a family owned, local graphic design and marketing agency that recently celebrated 30 years in business.

Caring for the environment is not about ticking a box or following a trend. Making real, sustainable lifestyle changes to reduce your impact on the natural world has to start in the home.

Ngā Whare Ora Taiao o Ngāmotu provides support to households to undertake a wide range of sustainability improvements to both their house and their property, repaying the costs through a voluntary targeted rate over a five or nine year period. In the process, local suppliers receive work, the local economy, health and our resilience in the face of climate change is boosted.

Whānau across Taranaki are currently acknowledging the new year. The rising of the star Puanga (Rigel) in the east early in the morning marks the Māori new year for Taranaki tribes.

During this period of uncertainty, people are starting to wonder where their food comes from, along with how to support their whānau. A very high percentage of the fresh fruit and vegetables available in the supermarkets come from overseas and can be at risk of undersupply. So how can we as a community remain resilient in these challenging and unpredictable times?

One of the latest terms in the sustainable fashion industry is slow fashion, which is highly accredited to Kate Fletcher. But what is slow fashion? How different is it from ethical and eco fashion? And what is the difference between slow and fast fashion?

Together with Ōpunake Communities Kindergarten, Sustainable Taranaki is embarking on its new Project “Our Green Ōpunake Journey”. This is one of the four initiatives from the Curious Minds fund supported by Venture Taranaki. Curious Minds works with school and community groups who have questions or ideas that can be explored or tested with science.

We interviewed Sha, Yvette, and Kerry from The Dressing Room on Devon Street in New Plymouth, and they gave us the inside scoop on slow fashion.

Food event specialist, market gardener and garden-to-table cook, Maria Lempriere has used her past experiences as well as her passion for food and sustainability to develop an inspiring business model.

Darlene Gibson lives in Lepperton. In 2016 she and her family purchased 1.7 acres of fence-free land and a self-care house with shrubbery gardens. Thank you, Darlene for sharing your story with us!

Our Behavioural Change Project has just started its second year of implementation and we would like to share some insights about what year one was all about.

This April, we'd like to recognise the Bishop’s Action Foundation (BAF) for their outstanding efforts in reducing their climate impact by implementing a Response Map. We hope these initiatives will serve as inspiration and a template for other businesses to use in our region.

Taranaki TimeBank and Sustainable Taranaki are both working towards the same goal: building sustainable and resilient communities through conscious relationships. Our partnership unites us in our goal of creating connections for those who want to grow and learn.

Thank you to Claire Mullin, who is the first to share her family’s sustainable initiatives with us. Claire is based in rural Opunake. Her family produces their own meat and milk; they have pigs, sheep and cows; and are trying to reduce their home expenses by producing more of their own food.

It was a lovely Wednesday evening at the TSB Hub in Hawera for the second screening of 2040, filled with lively and interactive conversations with community members, who shared their enthusiasm in living more sustainably and proposed some great ideas to further improve our current practices.

Pine Forest consists of nine "totems of timber” made of H3 wood offcuts which have been discarded by local construction sites around Taranaki and collected by Rose. She gives new life to these misfit pieces by fitting them together like an intricate jigsaw puzzle.

It's been a positive start to the new year for the Impact project with the good news that we have secured funding from the Ministry of Youth Development for another year. This is good news indeed and means we can roll out the programme until July 2021.

Friends of Sustainable Taranaki, old and new, gathered to watch the screening of 2040, a positive stance on climate change and examples of how sustainable initiatives happening right now can result in a wave of potentially ideal outcomes for our future.

In April this year local inspiration and founder of Crop Swap Aotearoa, Franziska von Hünerbein, travelled to Scotland to participate in the Climate Change and Consciousness 2019 conference. We asked her if she would share some reflections on her experience so that the community can benefit from her journey. Here's what she said.