Every other week I’m comparing sustainability practices in North America versus New Zealand, where my wife and I are traveling on sabbatical from our home in Maine. As one of the last places on Earth to be colonized by humans, having been discovered by its first people less than a thousand years ago, New Zealand is an island nation of stunning landscapes, full of interesting ideas for sustainable practices that protect its natural heritage.

In this edition of Dispatches from New Zealand, I want to share a few great ideas we ran across while staying in Dunedin. First, as in Christchurch, there are dedicated bike lanes that make it safe and convenient to get around. In particular, a bike trail from downtown Dunedin along both sides of the Otago Peninsula make this spectacular scenery accessible without a car. Second, farmers markets here have borrowed the library of things idea to make it easy to “reduce, reuse, and recycle,” even for tourists like us who forgot to bring our own reusable cups.

Bicycling Around New Zealand

We’ve been in Dunedin for almost two weeks, and in the whole time we’ve driven our car exactly once. In addition to being extremely walkable, Dunedin has an extensive public bus system and bicycle lanes. We’ve joined the e-bike craze, which makes biking against the wind and up steep hills a breeze. On a regular non-electric bike, our excursion out to Portobello and up to Sandymount would have been grueling—and perhaps impossible with our old knees. But it was a pleasant ride with electric motors and batteries bearing the brunt of the headwind and climbs.

Bike lanes that are separated from car traffic make it safe and fun to get around by pedal power. On our way to New Zealand, we stopped in Tahiti and rented e-bikes to pedal around the island of Mo’orea. The wide lanes and low speed limit there made that a relaxed adventure, too. Bicycling in both Tahiti and New Zealand has been a welcome improvement compared to our home state of Maine, which hasn’t yet built the bicycling infrastructure that will encourage more tourists to get out of their cars to enjoy more of our state’s beauty at a slower and more sustainable pace.

We once spent a year in Japan on another sabbatical, and that really opened our eyes to the possibilities of bicycling—there’s nothing quite like being out for a walk in the rain and being passed by a 95-year-old woman pedaling home with baskets full of groceries, holding a clear umbrella in one hand and ringing her bell with the other to let you know to give way. It was also a surprise to discover that downtown Tokushima featured a subterranean bicycle parking garage with attendants to park and retrieve hundreds of two-wheeled vehicles.

New Zealand may not quite be at the level of Japan when it comes to bicycle infrastructure, but it’s not far behind. We found an above-ground covered biking garage on the campus of the University of Otago that features an interesting two-level bike parking rack and tools for emergency bike repairs. Great ideas for any college or university campus!

Library of Things at the Farmers Market

A “library of things” takes the traditional idea of a library and extends it from books to other items. At the Saturday farmers market in Dunedin, I was happy to see that they have both made a commitment to “going circular” and implemented practices to make it happen.

At the farmers market, you can find a “cup library” and a “bag library” in case you forgot to bring your own reusable cup and reusable bags.

Dunedin has the same color-coded waste system as we saw in Auckland and Christchurch. The waste station at the farmers market reminded me of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Common Ground Country Fair, where I’ve been a “compost and recycling” volunteer for decades.

Having talked with hundreds of people about sorting their waste at public events, I really appreciated the clear signage and the standard colors of this system in New Zealand. Makes it so much easier for everyone to know what goes where when tossing their trash!

More Dispatches to Come…

We’ve got a “self-contained” camper van and are in Dunedin as a basecamp to explore the southern island. I’ll keep collecting sustainability observations and share my next dispatch in two weeks. Let me know if you have any sustainability questions or anything you’d like me to explore for you while I’m here. Until then, cheers!