Caravan gives environmental lessons

The Tread Lightly Caravan (TLC), Auckland’s first ever mobile environmental education classroom, is on the road visiting Auckland schools teaching children about living sustainably. 

The TLC aims to educate Auckland children about the environmental consequences of their individual actions and encourage them to live more sustainable lifestyles.

Since the TLC began visiting schools earlier this year, nearly a dozen Auckland primary and intermediate schools have hosted it and the feedback has been extremely positive, with the caravan now heavily booked for the rest of the year.  

The TLC has been developed by the Urban Ecoliving Charitable Trust. Executive director Gael Ogilvie says the TLC gives eight to 12-year-old school children an opportunity to experience fun, interactive activities.

“[It] demonstrates how everyday choices about what we buy, what we eat, how we heat our homes and how we travel, can make huge differences to our impact on the natural environment.”

The caravan and exhibits create an educational experience linking actions with environmental outcomes. The clean and green messages are easy to understand and linked to the NZ primary and intermediate school curricula. 

One exhibit – called “Your Environmental Footprint” – requires participants to answer questions about their lifestyles on a touch screen computer.  Depending on their responses, the game calculates the participants’ footprint expressed as how many of the earth’s resources would be needed if every person lived the same way.