Comvita Planting With The Future In Mind

As part of the 11^th annual ‘Birds, Bees, Kids and Trees’ environmental day, Comvita’s founder, Alan Bougen and Sustainability Coordinator, Kathy Broadhead, joined thirty local kids from Gate Pa School in Tauranga to help restore Tauranga’s Kopurererua (K) Valley to a more natural state. This resulted in a truly collaborative effort, assisted by the Tauranga City Council representatives, to plant more than 1000 native trees and flaxes in the K Valley.

Before the two-hour Project Tauranga planting session, the Gate Pa School students visited Comvita's Head Office to learn about sustainability and take the interactive and educational Experience Comvita tour. Gate Pa School student, Ahmet, said he learnt a lot of new and interesting things about nature and bees at Experience Comvita. "The tour in Paengaroa was like a party! I saw the queen bee and she had a big, blue dot on her. Then we learnt about the different bees having different jobs in the hive," said Ahmed.

Since 2005, local volunteers have planted more than 18,000 native flaxes and trees in K Valley as part of Birds, Bees, Kids and Trees and a group of Comvita head office staff turned out the other day to plant 2000 more bee-friendly plants at the same location. These staff are using half of their annual ‘Helping Hands Day’ volunteer leave to participate.

Project Tauranga Manager, Michael Vujnovich, said Comvita is a terrific Project Tauranga Partner, making a huge and lasting difference. “Comvita have contributed an enormous amount of time, energy and funds for more than a decade towards the restoration of K Valley and the education of young people to raise their awareness and fan their passion for our precious environment for generations to come.”