...and onion and honey sandwiches

en he starts pitching potato juice which doesn’t quite have the same pull-power as mango, cranberry or pomegranate. “My mantra is there must always be another way…” And perhaps potato juice might just be the way. Allan was on another holiday, another conference, this time in China, the world’s biggest potato producer, and they were handing out cans of potato juice. “I thought it might need something else like raspberry to make it vaguely interesting.” What about the nutrition, the goodness. “It’s not bad for you,” says Allan. “It’s good stu .” Maybe!

But then Allan is not a bad advertisement for some free thinking… and potato juice, and honey and onion sandwiches. At 82, he’s still doing eight hours, he’s very mindful of his health and wellbeing, and still enterprising and entrepreneurial. “I have a whole lot of creative, fascinating things going on to keep the interest levels up.” As they say, the more we do, the more we can do. And a busy person never has time to be unhappy.

at’s the cue for Allan to climb on his soapbox…to hammer the case for the use of ozonated water in growing our vegetables. “Ozonated water –sterilised, completely pure water, devoid of contaminants. It’s great stu .”

Ozonated water

Allan’s dabbling with ozonated water for crop sanitation, to control funguses on those crops.

“It’s easy to use, it’s low cost and helps reduce and prevent diseases.” Again, his bugbear with pharmaceuticals re-emerges.

“For 60 years the attitude has been that chemicals will x anything. And it’s been found those things that were initially sold as wonderful are dangerous.” But now, says the apostle of ‘better ways,’ there is a very safe and e cient alternative. And he points to his large heads of broccoli on sale at his ‘drop-in’ as case and point.

“Ten to 15 per cent improvement in good nutrients, 10-15 per cent improvement in size and 10-15 per cent improvement in taste.”

In the meantime the self-confessed ‘bush scientist’ o ers a detailed travel plan for his 2023 ‘holiday’ – a 16-hour operation at Waikato Hospital to remove cancerous bone from his jaw. As with everything in Allan’s life, he has done his research. ‘Listen, observe and ask the questions’ is another of his mantras.

“ ey’ll cut out the a ected bit of jaw bone, screw in a piece of titanium, they’ll harvest some bone from my leg, hook up the veins that keep the bone alive, throw away the cancerous bone and start reconstruction.

Spooky e water stations were installed along Waihī Beach to reduce the number of single use plastics going into land ll.

And the ‘Onion Man’ might have to ingest his honey and onion sandwiches through a straw for a couple of weeks. But he would have thought that through too.

From saving 7000 plastic bottles going to land ll to cleaning up millions of micro plastics from local beaches – the volunteers of Sustainable Waihī Beach have hit the ground running since launching six months ago.

Sustainable Waihī Beach is a fairly new community initiative that kicked o their sustainability e orts by opening seven water fountain and bottle re ll stations on September 10, 2022.

“[We know] 865 million single use plastic bottles go to land ll in New Zealand a year – and if we look at the statistics for Waihī Beach alone it attributes to one million of that number,” says Sustainable Waihī Beach co-founder Pippa Coombes.

SWB ambassador, former Prime Minister, Helen Clarke opened the water stations.

“Helen was in attendance with other notable gures supporting us to become the most sustainable beachside town in New Zealand. To date we’ve saved 7000 bottles going into land ll with the usage of the water stations.”

Coast and community e group’s recent e orts have seen them leading clean ups from Waihī Beach’s coastline after Cyclone Hale stirred up Bay of Plenty seas and spat out micro plastics on the beach town’s sandy doorstep.

“We have undertaken an emergency beach clean, which obviously showed huge community and agency support, and we’ll continue with that as our high risk, high priority area at the moment because there’s still millions of nurdles (microplastics) on the beach.”

SWB’s sustainability e orts aren’t just making positive change for the environment – it’s also making positive change for community dynamics too.

Pippa says SWB is helping to bring people together of all walks of life. “So we get to collaborate with some amazing people and groups such as the Menz Shed, the tamariki/children at the school, and we have huge support from local hapū Te Whanau a Tauwhao.

“ ere are many other di erent groups and agencies working together…so it really is just getting everybody on board and trying to achieve a common goal.” e next major sustainability initiative SWB is looking towards for 2023 is achieving predator-free status from Bowentown Heads through to Albacore Ave, Waihī Beach.

Predator-free trapping is will involve running trap lines, monitoring and working with Western Bay Wildlife Trust to look at little blue penguin and other native species numbers, says Pippa. “We’ll have meaningful data coming out of this which will obviously bolster the fact that predator-free trapping and monitoring actually works and brings back the natives. We are trying to commit to the community and actually evidence this as something that needs to be done Waihī Beach-wide.”

To join Sustainable Waihī Beach, visit: https://sustainablewaihibeach.co.nz/ Georgia Minkhorst