This is a great opportunity for you to get your voice heard by youth around Aotearoa. As well as making it onto the Just Focus website, we can now get some of your best work published on paper in a national youth mag - JET magazine.

Just Focus members have already written stuff for JET - in Sept, Corinna Howland shared her experience at the Pacific Youth Festival in the Oct issue Omar Hamed talked about Peak Oil and next month we’re looking at Climate Change but…

…we need YOU to write something for the December issue! For the final part of the environment theme we thought, what with chrissy coming up, we should have a look at issues surrounding WASTE.

What we need is:

1. A short article on waste/rubbish (up to 500 words)
This could include:

• The Christmas angle – how much is consumed at Xmas? How many trees are cut down? How much food is sold? What happens to all the presents from Aunty Nora that you don’t really want?
• how much waste is created in Aotearoa and the rest of the world? Which countries produce the most/least? Where does it come from (who is to blame?)? Where does it go when it’s thrown away? How much damage are we doing to the environment?
• Some people make their living sorting through rubbish – a case study would be good.
• An interview with someone who works at your local rubbish dump – is your community wasteful?
• How much stuff is recycled these days? Could we do more? Which countries have the best and worst track records?
• How sustainable is our life? Check out the eco footprint quiz and find out how many planets we’d need if everyone lived like you!

2. Ideas for reducing waste this Xmas

• Ideas for alternative presents that are both cash-saving and rubbish-reducing
• How to shop more ethically
• What to do with all those cards and that wrapping paper

3. Ideas for fighting waste
Your ideas for the 3 Rs – Reduce, Re-use, Re-cycle – send in any practical ideas for young people

You’re interested? Write to kim@globaled.org.nz to let her know what you’re keen to contribute.

As well as the buzz of getting published we have got some goodies to give away – so what are you waiting for?

You can send in as much or as little as you like - from just one idea for an alternative present or way to reduce waste to a full article - anything is good! The deadline for articles is Monday October 30th 2006 – but let Kim know if you’re writing something so she can support you with research ideas or whatever you need…

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 12th, 2006 at 12 October 2006 and is filed under Just Focus Site News.