Ambassador Alvin

Tēnā koutou,

I am Alvin the LEARNZ ambassador. I go on all the trips with Shelley and help look after the other ambassadors from your schools. This is going to be an awesome field trip to Wellington

You will follow the journey of water from its source to our taps and learn how to use water more sustainably.

I can't wait to head back to Wellington. Sign up your ambassador now so that I have some company on the trip.

See you soon,

Alvin.

Monday 22 May

Kia ora,

I have been looking forward to starting this field trip for a long time and it was great to have the company of an enthusiastic bunch of ambassadors to share the adventure with. I was surprised at how busy the airport was and there were no spare seats in the plane. Luckily we had a window seat and got to admire Te Tiritiri o te Moana, the mighty Southern Alps as we flew north.

I love Wellington and it was fun being able to show the other ambassadors around the waterfront and visit Te Papa, our National Museum.

Tomorrow we are off to find out more about how water is treated.

See you then,

Alvin.

Tuesday 23 May

Kia ora,

We followed the journey of water from its source to our taps today and I was amazed at how much work goes into making our water safe to drink. It was incredible to see how much dirt is removed from our water. Chlorine is also added to our water to kill any harmful bacteria.

I found out that Wellington uses about 140 million litres of water every single day and all this water is treated. Treating water costs lots of money and it made me realise that I need to be careful about how much water I use.

Tomorrow we will see what happens to water once it goes down the drain.

See you then,

Alvin.

Wednesday 24 May

Kia ora,

We looked at cleaning water again today, except this time it wasn’t cleaning water to drink but cleaning water that has been used and ends up down the drain. Wellington produces about 140 million litres of wastewater every day and this is treated by four different treatment plants.

It’s amazing that the whole treatment process involving screening out solids, settling ponds, bacteria treatment and UV treatment only takes about 3 hours. Treated wastewater is then safe to pump into Cook Strait via a 1.8km long pipe.

Tomorrow we will find out more about how we can help manage our water use.

See you then,

Alvin.

Thursday 25 May

Kia ora,

We had a fantastic last day on the People and Water field trip. The sun was shining and we travelled all over the place learning about where water comes from to fight fires and how to keep our stormwater clean.

I didn’t realise that stormwater isn't treated so anything that goes down the drain ends up in our rivers, lakes and ocean so we shouldn’t wash anything other than rain water down the drain.

I now have a much better understanding of how much work goes into providing us all with water and when I get home I am going to make sure I don’t waste water.

See you on another field trip soon,

Alvin.