Grassroots Circular Economy

Wouna le Roux

Wouna is a textile artist based at Square Edge Community Arts, creating work that is often 3D/sculptural by nature.  She primarily uses second hand or discarded clothes and found fabrics, and aim for sustainability in her practice. By repurposing and reworking these textiles into artworks, they are transformed, ‘reborn’ and given a new lease of life.

www.wounaleroux.com/
www.instagram.com/wiwi_makes_wiwi_creates/

Sculpture: But one mother, but one earth/Borrowed time (2023).

It featured in two separate exhibitions, and I change the name for the second exhibition- hence the two titles. 

Lucian Acaru

Lucian Acaru is a regenerative agriculture practitioner and Master's student in Agribusiness at Massey University. Through worm.ae, he has worked with farms, schools, community groups, and businesses to transform organic waste into valuable compost using aerobic composting and vermicomposting. His experience includes developing circular economy solutions for large-scale indoor farms and desert climate, alongside supporting households through workshops and practical education.

www.worm.ae

@worm.uae

Kelly Dombroski

What is the point of a circular economy? Rethinking our relationship to waste. 

Kelly Dombroski is a Professor of Geography at Massey University and a long-time advocate for community-led environmental and wellbeing initiatives. Her work explores how local action, collaboration, and creative approaches can support place-based and circular economies. Her work helps amplify what communities are already doing to imagine and build flourishing futures that are equitable, sustainable, and connected in place.

Palmerston North Repair Cafe

The Palmerston North Repair Café hosts free monthly pop up events where locals can bring along broken or damaged household items to be repaired by skilled volunteer fixers.

The Repair Café aims to make repair, repurposing, and recycling more accessible while helping people develop practical skills and confidence to extend the life of their belongings. By keeping items in use for longer, the initiative reduces waste, strengthens community connections, and builds a more resilient city.

Supported by Environment Network Manawatū, Supergrans, Menzshed and PNCC. 

Upcylingclub1

Yoko Wakiya

With Creative Conservation as our motto, we are a craft group that offers free craft activities at Roslyn Library twice a month. We encourage people to reuse, recycle, and upcycle materials to create something beautiful, useful, or simply fun. We are proud of the original games we have made using preloved and donated materials such as fabric remnants, wool, milk bottle tops, and more.

Recently, we also started a gathering called the Happy Lunch Club. While it focuses on friendship and connection, some participants have begun collecting milk bottle tops for ENM to upcycle into bags. We feel we are making a positive contribution to our community and helping create a better world.

Slow Farm

Phil Stevens

Slow Farm and its partner enterprises (Coolstuff Community and Biochar Energy & Environment Ltd) have been at the centre of biochar advocacy, production, R&D, and policy for eight years. Director Phil Stevens has been getting the word out everywhere he can and is looking for collaborative projects in the Manawatū. Biochar sits at a powerful nexus of possibility, with its climate healing attributes only the beginning of what it can do. Drop by and learn more about how we're putting this ancient wisdom to work solving modern-day issues, from regenerative food systems to energy production and urban water treatment, and adding value to residue streams while mitigating some of the problems associated with biomass materials in circular economies.

https://slowfarm.co.nz/

Reduce, Reuse, Repair Research Project 

This research project traces how groups of people move towards practices of reduce, reuse and repair and how such transformations shape people’s sense of self in relation to waste. This is an action research project where people work together to investigate a real-world problem and take action to address that problem. We are running focus groups made of like-minded people who will explore their practices relating to waste and to items that could become waste, their concerns and feelings surrounding waste, and what they would like to change in relation to waste practices for themselves and their wider collectives. The aim of these focus groups is to understand how to make a circular economy more possible in Aoteaora. 

Aria Hart

This project turns waste — from transport gear failures and outdoor equipment offcuts — into something useful again, helping keep pedestrian transit friendly and supporting the rubber and composite materials market as supply chains shift.

The result: custom bracelets made from rescue materials, like unpatchable bike inner tubes and acrylic offcuts from the maker space. Made in February and worn daily (including in the shower) without a single break, they can also be paired with a medal or similar item.