We are all volunteers Together making something out of nothing, for those that have nothing

Changing our Foil Focus

It’s now August, which means Spring and Christmas time are rapidly approaching. Gearing up for spring cleaning this year we have realised something important… we have a LOT of foil! This is a problem we are so grateful to have, because you, our amazing supporters and whanau have answered our calls for foil with increasing generosity. Even though Spring is a mere month away, we are still experiencing the impacts of winter. Here in Otakou we had snow this week, with more forecast in the coming weeks. It’s pretty typical in New Zealand for Spring to be chilly, especially after such a mild winter. This means that even though we are technically getting closer to summer, we still have people outside on the street, in tents, in cars, and houses without heating, enduring temperatures below zero. These conditions can easily be life threatening, which means we still have a lot of work to do. 

The overwhelming amount of foil is fantastic for us in terms of production, but as we grow, and people continue to embrace foil as a reusable resource, we are realising that we need to focus our efforts on making blankets as quickly as possible. The need is not going away, and we want to do everything we can to keep people safe and warm. That is why we have decided to streamline the foil we are taking on board from now on. This will mean that at our collection points the only foil we will be taking is family size chip packets and biscuit packets. This is a big change for us, but necessary to make as many blankets as possible. This is because bigger packets take less time to fuse, and are easier for our volunteers to work with. Although we’d love to take all the foil that isn’t being recycled, the reality is that our focus has always been on helping people the best way we can. Which for now is going to mean saving a smaller but still considerable amount of foil from landfill so that the roughly 2% of Kiwis (based on 2018 Census Data) who are classified as homeless are able to survive the freezing temperatures. This is not the perfect solution, but this is what we are currently able to do. If you have time and/or money you are willing to donate to CPPNZ to help keep us ‘keep the lights on’ you will find a donation portal above.

We want to thank all of you who donate foil, make strips, donate time, money or energy to help us help others. You are at the heart of what we do, and we can’t thank you enough for your generosity and your understanding as we streamline our process so that we can ultimately do more for our communities. 

Jessie Ladbrook​

Volunteer