๐ Celebrate Community โ Mar. 1st to 31st ๐๐
Knowing your neighbours is one thing, but actually spending time together is to write a much richer story together... an opportunity to have fun, learn more about each other, and recognise that the strings that connect us often run much longer than just the length of our streets.
This month is all about bringing your community together and having a great time! We want March to be all about celebrating the connections we have while making new ones along the way. As we all know, what makes a neighbourhood great isn't the houses and cars, gardens and streets - it's the people who share their presence and aroha with each other.
A wonderful way to take part is to participate in Neighbours Day Aotearoa which is celebrating it's 10th anniversary from March 22nd to 31st. To help you get started, we love their suggestions for 10 little and 10 big ways to get involved. (link below)
Let us know how you're celebrating this month by tagging us in your posts + using the following hashtag so we can see what you get up to:
#NSNZcelebratecommunity
๐งฉ๐ Riddle me this, Neighboursโฆ
I am an odd number. Take away a letter and I become even. What number am I?
Do you think you know the answer?
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SLASH BESIDE THE TRACK UP TO TRIG
I question the wisdom and the morality of an industry which creates so much waste, waste which is also a cause of widespread and devastating damage. So, I searched the internet for potential uses of slash. It was easy to find.
I recommend a visit to nzbioforestry.co.nz. I quote from the website:
OUR SOLUTION:
NZ Bio Forestry proposes to develop a sustainable renewable forestry model that increases the economic value of the NZ- Aotearoa forestry sector, simply by integrating bio-technologies augmenting the forestry, wood manufacturing, and petrochemistry industries into one model.
Specifically, our strategy is to utilise the whole tree and convert the treeโs sugars into bioenergy, biomaterials, and biochemicals. This means using slash, off cuts, pruning, and wood waste to produce biofuel via bio pellets and biochemicals. It means optimising logs through the whole processโฆ.logging, manufacturing freighting, and refining process to serve the many Asia-Pacific markets with high-value productsโฆ.not just exporting raw logs to one or two large dominant markets! (End of quote)
NZ Bio Forestry then contrasts the financial return from the present exports of raw logs with the potential return from utilising the WHOLE TREE.
In US dollars, the return from exporting logs is between $50 - $140 per log.
Using the whole tree including the slash and other waste for wood processing would return $200 - $800 per tree, and,
Using the bio-refinery process to convert the wood waste into fossil-free biochemicals would return $2,500 - $11,200 per tree.
I canโt help but conclude that our current focus on exporting logs is a pitiful failure of industry and government policy compared with the potential benefits of processing THE WHOLE TREE. And to complete the argument, this not just theory. In Scandinavia, SCA, which owns Europeโs largest private forest with 2.7 million hectares, has built a well-invested value chain that maximises the value of each individual tree and all of the forestryโs resources.
A SUMMARY OF POTENTIAL ADDITIONAL PRODUCTS:
Wood Pellets and Chips: Slash can be collected, dried, and processed into hog fuel or wood pellets for use in industrial boilers, as a replacement for coal, to generate heat and electricity.
Biofuel Production: Research is underway to convert forest residues into marine biofuel to help decarbonize the shipping sector.
Gasification: Advanced, small-scale, on-site processing plants can turn slash into renewable energy products like bio-oil, ethanol, and hydrogen.
Biochemicals: Specialized refineries can convert woody waste into sustainable alternatives to plastics, chemicals, and industrial products.
WAKE UP Aotearoa, New Zealand!!!
Share your favourite main crop potato recipe and win a copy of our mag!
Love potatoes? We will give away free copies of the May 2026 issue to readers whose potato recipes are used in our magazine. To be in the running, make sure you email your family's favourite way to enjoy potatoes: mailbox@nzgardener.co.nz, by March 1, 2026.
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