We are the Senior Syndicate of Mapua School (Years 4-8). We started our topic by walking around Mapua to identify key aspects of our community.

We were interested to find that, although we work and play here every day, there were several areas that we knew very little about. The old Chemical Works site and Aranui Park were two areas that very few children knew anything about. This study gave us the opportunity to get to know our area and to know the background stories of what we saw and took for granted.

We were able to appreciate the beauty of our surroundings but also noted the not so good parts too. We identified the following four areas as important environmental issues in our community:

1. The chemical site
2. Our carbon footprint
3. The Mapua Wetlands
4. Coastal erosion