The Chip Packet Project NZ comes to Northland. In the picture, left, Lou Farrell, CPPNZ founder and national coordinator Terrena Griffiths and Amber-Lyla Farrell. Photo / Michael Cunningham
The Chip Packet Project NZ comes to Northland. In the picture, left, Lou Farrell, CPPNZ founder and national coordinator Terrena Griffiths and Amber-Lyla Farrell. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Northland students are becoming part of a New Zealand project providing a "warm night's sleep" to the region's most vulnerable.
And when the mission is successful, it will help reduce waste from landfills equivalent to more than 100 million recycling years.
But the real magic here is that it allbegins with a packet of potato chips (or any foil-wrapped food item).
The Chip Packet Project New Zealand (CPPNZ) is collecting freshly-washed empty foil or chip packets to make lightweight thermal "survival sheets", pillows and ground rolls for the people in need to fight the arriving winter months.
The project, which rolled out eight months ago, has now arrived in Northland, and Founder and National Co-ordinator Terrena Griffiths say she will be coming to the region every six weeks to host "blanket parties", demonstrating how to make blankets out of chip packets.
Griffiths conducted her first demonstration in the region at the Carruth House of Whangārei Boys' High School.
A total of 18 students, parents, and members of the public attended the workshop last Friday and ended up making eight blankets and four pillows, ready to be distributed in Whangārei.
Griffiths said children making these blankets for Kiwis throughout New Zealand sent a message that touched hearts on both sides – makers and receivers of the survival sheet.
"When the students are done making these blankets, it gets handed over to social services and they send us a photo when it's donated. We forward it to the kids for them to know the end-to-end process."
While it might take roughly two to 10 minutes to finish a packet of chips, each packet would take 80 years to decompose in the landfill, Griffiths said.
Each survival sheet uses 44 chip packets, which is 3520 recycling years.
Griffiths said their team was aiming to make 30,000 blankets to be distributed across the country for this winter and people were welcome to help in any step of the process – eating chips, washing packets, dropping them off at the collection centre, or making the final product.
"We have done amazing work across New Zealand in Healthy Homes Act, but we have not given those families, already on the poverty line, an electricity discount to turn the heating on during winters.
"So there are parents struggling with money, kids are already struggling to find regular food in NZ, and while we cannot promise them a good night's sleep we can help with a warm night's sleep."
Kiwis spent around $157 million on potato chips alone in 2015.
Griffiths said this was a cultural change to rethink that foil was a reusable resource, and not soft plastic recyclable.
"It's an easy idea that makes sense and is also easy to do. This is only a drop in the bucket, but a drop in the bucket is better than no drop at all."
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CPPNZ was Inspired by the 2019 UK project, Crisp Packet Project, and the blankets made in 2019 were still in circulation.
Former matron at the Carruth House, Griffiths said the students got a sense of achievement that they had done something to save the planet and also helped someone in need.
Northland's collection centres are Ruawai Primary School, 4376 State Highway 12, and Kamo Intermediate School, 10 Hailes Road, Kamo.
