NZ may be a small country, but in the wider world, what we do, use and consume affects lives everywhere. So I'm on a mission to see how we're treating our backyards, both here and further afield. What are we doing to be cleaner and greener? What do we need to change, and what does the future hold? So join me, Te Radar, as I go global. Don't worry ` I'll plant plenty of trees to offset the travel. Now, where's my passport? Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015 MELLOW GUITAR MUSIC Many people think the value of land relates to what you can put on it, and given the average Kiwi house is worth a king's ransom, well, perhaps that's no surprise, but with an ever-increasing population, perhaps the truer value of land lies with what it can provide for us. There's a lot that we can learn from the land, and it's a lesson they haven't always taught in schools. Students look on and note effective techniques and mistakes while one of their number takes a class. Teaching methods have advanced considerably in the past few years, and many ways of approaching the mind of a child are learnt by these teachers of tomorrow. CHILDREN: Welcome to Rhode Street School. I'm taking a field trip to Hamilton's Rhode Street School, where the grounds are the new classroom. This is our sensory garden, and it covers the five senses. Yep. Yep. So there's mint for the taste. There's, like, furry leaves for the touch. There's the lavender for the smell. There's the lavender for the smell. Smells pretty good that lavender. What's happening here? This is the orchard part of the school? What's happening here? This is the orchard part of the school? Yep, we've got all different fruits. Wow. The kids even run their own school cafe with the food they grow on site. It's the initiative of principal Shane Ngatai. It's great to stroll through an orchard at the best of times, but to do it in the grounds of a primary school is pretty special. Four years ago, this was grass, and look at it now. It's producing fruit that's feeding our whole community. It goes beyond the orchard too. You've got a vegetable garden, worm farms, a hydroponics unit. The hydroponics unit is fantastic, because the children can grow those salad lines right through winter when they're at their most expensive. Again, going back to that sustainability model, by growing, um, their lettuces, their cucumbers, their tomatoes, their chillies, their eggplants, capsicums ` the list goes on ` they're able to then source those ingredients for the kitchen. Not just highfaluting sort of ways to justify a thing in your` in your school grounds when you should be teaching them to read and write and count? when you should be teaching them to read and write and count? Right, well, they still have to read and write and count when you plant an orchard. They had to work out mathematically how much room each tree needed, how big was it to grow in its lifecycle, um, which trees can cohabitate with others and not cross-pollinate. Every single tree that's been planted in this school ` over a thousand of them ` have all been classified by the children and identified in a resource that other schools can use. What have we got here? Um, we've got pumpkins, and we've got beetroot. Um, we've got pumpkins, and we've got beetroot. Yep. That's enormous. Over there you've got a pizza oven? Over there you've got a pizza oven? Yes, three boys decided they like to play with fire, and the principal said that they can do something at school, but they've got to do it in a safe way, so they talked to a man in Kaitaia who built pizza ovens, and they come up with this. When I went to primary school, if we'd said, 'We're gonna build a pizza oven,' it would have been unheard of. it would have been unheard of. (LAUGHS) Do you guys reckon you're lucky? Do you guys reckon you're lucky? BOTH: Yep. Do you guys reckon you're lucky? BOTH: Yep. I reckon you're pretty lucky. Do you reckon that maybe I could enrol as an adult student? Nah. Nah. (LAUGHS) And this is the economics department in action. Pretty lady selling ice-cold drinks! The school's annual Kai Festival turns produce into profit, proving that money can grow on trees. Thanks for coming to Kai Festival. Results like this rely on healthy soil, so it makes sense to take a stand on land. Despite the size of the planet, humans essentially rely on the top 10cm of it to survive, because that is where the soil is. Useful. Not so useful. And before you can grow it, you've got to get to know it. Tell me about your relationship with your father. Basically, it's a supermarket,... where our food shops for its food. When food like this carrot is growing, it shops for its food from the soil around it. If there's nothing on the shelves, the result is a hungry carrot. If there's anything nasty in the soil, like leftover chemicals or pollutants, then the carrot will consume those too. Whatever the carrot eats, we eat as well. So, really, we should protect the soil and treat it as part of the family. There he goes. There he goes. Get him. Get him. Oh,... (LAUGHS) can't. Oh, watch out for the other one. Oh, that's him. You've got him. Got him. Oh, that is fantastic. > Fantastic, lovely work. MELLOW MUSIC Oh, would you like a little bit of this, eh? Here you go. Oh, who's a lucky guy? There ya go. On an irrigated area of Central Otago, pedologists ` soil scientists, that is ` gather information towards the South Island's soil map. In most districts, the soil pattern is a very complex one. There may be three or more soils in one paddock. The more detailed the survey, the more it can help increase production. In the drafting room, information is used to complete the soil map of the South Island. Reserves, forests, farms ` where the good soil for each purpose lies is now known, and no farmer who consults the soil maps need waste his life trying to break in hopeless land. Even our hopeless land is a Garden of Eden compared to what Westfalia Orphanage started with. The children have worked green magic on a quarry outside Lima in Peru. What's astounding is that that is so dry and so barren that even the cactus has given up attempting to grow there. Whereas down here it is essentially lushness personified ` green, rich, food-producing. The kids transformed lifeless desert into life-giving gardens. You can hear them over there. They sound pretty happy. You can hear them over there. They sound pretty happy. CHILDREN CHATTER MAN SPEAKS SPANISH MAN SPEAKS SPANISH TRANSLATOR: There's, like, 139 children between teenagers and kids. We work very hard here, not only taking care of these children,... We work very hard here, not only taking care of these children,... (SPEAKS SPANISH) ...we also take care of the environment. That's really very important for us. Many of these vegetables go from here straight to our table. Right. I imagine that with a lot of little hungry mouths to feed, you can't grow enough. No, uh... No, uh... No, it's not really enough. No, uh... No, it's not really enough. (SPEAKS SPANISH) We sometimes need to buy some extra food. It's a pretty good-looking garden though. It's a pretty good-looking garden though. (SPEAKS SPANISH) Yeah. Yeah. (SPEAKS SPANISH) These kids actually take good care of growing these ` just very caring and loving. The orphans are in charge of just about everything, under the watchful eye of George. This place was created with this whole concept of teaching the children responsibility and creating an environment that was good for them. This was nothing but grey desert. I mean, look what they've done. The land was given to the group that built the orphanage, and that was the extent of the Peruvian government's help. They just basically gave them some gravel, didn't they? They just basically gave them some gravel, didn't they? Yeah, a bunch of dirt. It's better than nothing. One of the most important things you can do for them is to give them an environment that they are comfortable, happy and secure in, then teach them responsibility. All of this you see here, the children take care of this. They take care of the crops. They take care of the animals. They do the cleaning. I'm gonna tell you, they behave better than my kids ever did. I'm gonna tell you, they behave better than my kids ever did. Yeah. They seem like good kids. They're also learning the skills they'll need to coax a living from the soil. If there's one thing you notice about Peru, it's that they appreciate the value of land. For hundreds of years, they've found ingenious ways of using every last cubic metre. What an amazing feat of engineering. I mean, this is some serious rock work. I have trouble even putting in a tiny retaining wall. Must have been jolly hard work. I wonder who the first person was who came along and went, 'I reckon we can turn that rock-strewn hillside into a useful piece of farmland 'with the addition of some terracing.' You know, 500 or 600 years ago, this would have been a hive of activity, people planting crops, and in the distance the sound of a pan flute, just playing gently to ease them through their work day. Pan flute classic hits ` just to keep them going. PAN FLUTE MUSIC And somewhere on this hillside there would have been a guy who thought, 'Just shut up with the pan flute. 'Play something different.' WESTERN MUSIC It strikes me that when it comes to land, you see what you want to see, especially here in Monument Valley. For some, it's a majestic landscape. For others, it's a dry, dusty wasteland. The governments sees it as a potential source of mineral wealth, and me, well, it's the stuff dreams are made of. When I was a kid, I read huge numbers of Westerns, often set in landscapes just like this, and I always dreamed that one day I might get a chance to ride a horse through somewhere like this. Alas, no, it's still Shank's pony for me. Tonight I'm bunking down in a traditional Navajo house ` the hogan. It's hard to imagine anyone living in this inhospitable desert, but hogans are a triumph over the elements. Energy-efficient domes of wood and earth, they let the cool air in and keep the heat out. And as the Navajo believe you should be up to greet the dawn, the door faces east so the sun can wake you if you've accidentally slept in. DRUMMING, CHANTING This is my first night in a hogan, and all I can think about is that some time over the last 70 million years or so, this land has been underwater three times, and it's currently a mile above sea level, and that makes me feel, as a human being, particularly insignificant. DRUMMING, CHANTING What I learned from cowboy movies is that a man's got to do what a man's got to do, and what a man mostly had to do was protect his land. Here, where so many of those epic films were shot, people are still fighting to protect their land. I'm meeting Ira, who's helping me welcome the dawn. (SINGS IN NAVAJO) That song is praying to the morning people, letting them know that we're enjoying this beautiful morning, the blessings that it's bringing to us ` us who reside here on this earth. And when we say us, we mean everybody ` these animals, the plants and people ` the dine ` here within the four sacred mountains that we call home. Obviously, dawn is pretty important to Navajo. Yes, it is. It's the beginning of life. So you don't have too many people who sleep in? Yep, everyone's gotta get up and meet this dawn for their blessings. Was this always a special area? This actually was. When the people first came upon the horizon, they saw these mountains. They'd never seen something like this and thought they were holy entities, and they held them like that. Even to this day, they still hold that sacred significance. Do you think that tourists appreciate any of that, or do they just take photos of rocks they've seen in cowboy movies? I think they're here for the cowboy movies. (LAUGHS) When it was set aside as a reservation, I guess the government thought there wasn't much going on? Nope. That's why` Nope. That's why` Here you go. Have some desert. They thought there was nothing here. Other tribes didn't get their area back because they had mountains and stuff. Here, it looked like there was nothing, but we had a rich deposit of uranium and coal. We have, um, oil. We have, um, oil. And I guess that's been a bit of a mixed blessing, really? It has, but this whole area was really rich with uranium mines back in the '60s and '70s, and a lot of the people that worked in the uranium mines are gone. They weren't given the proper equipment for, uh, that kind of exposure. They'd come home just dressed up in what they worked with, and a lot of them didn't wash, they ate, so all that radiation stuff got all over the place. A lot of the old Navajos, they built their homes. The tailing pile, they put it in with their concrete. They built their homes on it, so the radiation exposure was very high in this area. The governor of Arizona was saying, 'There's all this uranium. We've got to go and get it. 'It's worth billions. There will be hundreds of jobs,' and lots of other people were going, 'Well, no, we're not really that into that.' There was a big controversy about that ` opening up Mother Earth and digging around in her veins and being inside of her. For us Navajos, that` that was, uh, um,... a no-no. You know, it was a bad omen to go inside the earth. That was the only, um` The only time that process would happen was when you died. The day you'd be replanted. It's easy to see why Ira has reservations about the reservation. The Navajo see themselves as one with their environment. The sun, the soil, the animals and themselves all form part of an indivisible system. Seems pretty spot on to me, so I'm heading for home soil. That's if I can find the exit. WESTERN MUSIC I don't seem to remember this wagon. Here in the Land of the Long White Cloud, we're celebrated for our strong white wine ` oh, and our reds and the roses, but there's a lot of leftovers after the bounty is bottled. I'm visiting Glen at NZ Extracts in Marlborough, who's found a way to make a health supplement from what the wine industry chucks away. In those skins and seeds, there are some things that are good for our health. The grape has been out in this beautiful sunshine. It's got to protect itself from the UV radiation, so it puts into the skin all sorts of things that are protective and healthy, so we can then take those out of those skins. When we eat those as humans, that helps us be more healthy. It strikes me that there would be an enormous amount of by-product just from Marlborough. There's probably 60,000, 70,000 tons of waste material currently produced out of Marlborough, and as the, uh, wine industry grows, there will be more. What happens to it now? Fed to cows? Yes, taken away, fed to cows. We've run out of enough cows in Marlborough now. There's more grapes than cows, and so it's a bit of a problem. Where's it gonna go? Do you think there will ever become a stage where your end of the process is more valuable than the front end of the wine industry? Well, I'd like to think that maybe one day that will be the case. Wouldn't that be great? You could toast yourself with the by-product of your industry ` wine. Don't tell the winemakers. In Seddon, Peter Yealands knows the value of wine marc ` that's vine clippings that normally get binned. He's won international awards for his winery's sustainable practices, but he's still gets his hands dirty. This is the compost that we put back under the vines. It's made up of all sorts of stuff ` seaweed off the beach, 40%, 50% grape marc and quite a bit of sun-treated sawdust and bark, bit of lime straight out of the ground. We get a lot of shellfish waste from factories in town. We're also gonna put biochar in here. We will have a fantastic brew. You know, you wouldn't get better water retention. I would imagine there's not many wineries around with a pile of compost this size. Not too many wineries are managed by a nutcase like me either. Not too many wineries are managed by a nutcase like me either. BOTH LAUGH What was the idea behind this? You had lots of stuff to do something with? It's very hard country out here. It's windy. It's dry. We don't have a lot of topsoil, a lot of humus in the ground. This whole peninsula here was shoved up out of the sea, and everywhere you dig, it's actually quite toxic as you get down, but, uh, this here, you know, mitigates us putting solid fertilizers on, chemical fertilizers, and, uh, you know, you don't get any more enjoyment out of digging up under this and finding 50-odd worms, you know, in a shovel full. Then the worms will mix the soil, and we get a dark material on the top, creeping darker and darker as you go down. So essentially what you're farming here is soil? So essentially what you're farming here is soil? That's the starting point, and all the good husbandry flows on from there. What we're looking at is a whole lot of stuff that otherwise would have gone to waste. The majority of it is a problem for the people that generate it. Do they have to pay to get rid of it? Do they have to pay to get rid of it? Yes, they do. Yeah. You know, we make about 10,000, 12,000 ton a year, which is a bloody a lot. That is a bloody lot. My viticulturist said he'd have to get it analysed. I told him, 'That would be the bloody day.' And to minimize the mowing ` miniature sheep. SHEEP BAA They're actually an endangered species. Baby Doll is their pedigree name. We've probably got more here than in the rest of the world. The concept is to reduce our carbon footprint ` take away the need to mow the grass, take away the need to spray the grass. I guess with an ordinary sheep, it would eat the vines. I guess with an ordinary sheep, it would eat the vines. Yes, that's right. So these are small. We've seen the odd one stand on its rear legs, uh, so they do like grape vines, but if they can't reach them, then they're tough out of luck. It really does strike me that that is the key to this place ` you're always thinking outside the square. We're all 100% behind our sustainability ethos. We know that we're putting more back than we're taking out. We know that we're creating something that we're all proud of, so, uh, yeah, we've got a very very happy bunch here. Peter's cooking up another idea for the vine clippings ` toasting them. Hi, Harry. Hi, Harry. Hey, Radar. How are you mate? Hi, Harry. Hey, Radar. How are you mate? Very good. What is going on here? We're building a biochar generator. We're building a biochar generator. Right. We're building a biochar generator. Right. Pete has an idea. I imagine Pete has a lot of ideas. I imagine Pete has a lot of ideas. He's full of ideas, dude. We've got a surplus of grape marc. It's one of our waste products. So we're gonna put it in our compost once we've made it. So we're gonna put it in our compost once we've made it. Right. > This is grape marc ` super light. All the moisture is gone ` full of air pockets and stuff like that, so moisture and nutrients can all get in there. God, no end to the recycling going on here ` second-hand bits of auger, getting rid of a waste product, turning it into something useful. Yep, and then putting it back where it came from. Yep, and then putting it back where it came from. Perfect. Peter's also making his tractors breathe a little greener. Gidday, Radar. How are you? Hey, Jeff. How's things? Hey, Jeff. How's things? Good, thank you. Hey, Jeff. How's things? Good, thank you. Just peering at your, um... Hydrogen generator. Hydrogen generator. Right. They` They don't come standard. No, they don't. We've put that on to this tractor. Hydrogen's a very fast-burning gas. It makes the diesel in the engine burn more completely. Therefore it produces a lot less carbon emissions. If you had to give a definition of what sustainability was, what do you think it'd be? Putting more back than you take out. I'd like to see the education system and for everyone to try and instil in our younger generation sustainability. I think we need to start at the grass roots. All the way from the little things, all the way up to the bigger vision. Yep. We have a terrific country. We are clean and we are green in general. We do have bits to improve on, and we always will, and that's fine, but I'm proud to be a Kiwi, and I'm proud to be doing what I'm doing, and, look, whenever I go overseas, you know, I see rare examples of similar situations as what we've got here, but there's no other country that's doing as well as what we are. NZ is blessed. Love of the land is at the heart of being a NZer. I've come to Whakarewarewa to celebrate the end of my journey with a last supper and chat with Nanny Chris, who loves her land even though it keeps blowing up. We're sitting on top of a volcano. Any minute you could have a geyser of boiling water squirting up. Mm-hm. Mm-hm. You're very calm. That one over there is pretty feisty. That one over there is pretty feisty. Oh, yeah, but that's Mother Nature. You know, what woman doesn't get feisty now and again, eh? (LAUGHS) That one can throw water out, but it never does when you're near it. It waits till you're gone. It's more or less like saying,... 'My territory. You need me. I don't need you.' It's a matter of respecting nature, and you get it back. It's a matter of respecting nature, and you get it back. Mmm. It's the way the old people told me here. In the Maori world, you call it your taha wairua ` your spiritual binding with nature, with creation. You know you're part of it ` a little part of it. A small part. A small part. Yeah, but you can't do without it. BOTH LAUGH BOTH LAUGH It's your fresh air. It's your lifeblood. In Urewera, the back of` on the west of Tainui, you can just dig into the bank, the water will flow. It will trickle, you know. You couldn't get any water purer than that. No. So I've had the best of both worlds ` Mother Nature's cold, cold fresh water and Mother Nature's sterilized boiling water, and I couldn't ` If I could put the two together in one place, I'd have my own Shangri-La. (LAUGHS) (LAUGHS) You know, I really would. (LAUGHS) Looking after our land is a recipe for health, wealth and happiness. Over the last few weeks, I've met a bunch of Kiwis putting a lot into this country, not just gardeners and growers, but inventors tinkering with what we take for granted, backyard engineers building new solutions and bright sparks shining a light on the future. They're proof that living more sustainably is not about going without or going backwards. It's about putting in more than you take out ` sensible, really. Let's face it ` the planet we live on is pretty small, and with more being born every day, it's getting smaller and smaller, and not only do we have to live on it, we have to live from it. It has to sustain us just as we have to sustain it. So what we do to it and what we do with it is crucial. As that famous old Lorax once said, 'Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.' UPBEAT BANJO MUSIC Captions by Antony Vlug. Edited by Ingrid Lauder. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015