South Canterbury Eco Centre opening – 10th December 2022
It has been years in the design, and it was nice to have some enthusiastic Timaru EV owners encourage the installation of EV chargers at the new South Canterbury Eco Centre.
While they are AC destination chargers, and there is no cafe anywhere close, the head of the Eco Centre's opening was very good at encouraging "only charging" in these parks and to direct to our display a few metres away - just in case lots of members of the public came along needing to charge! As it happened, of the twelve cars that turned up, many had travelled long distances to get here, and the chargers managed to get them filled up during the 3 hours we spoke with people attending the opening.
What was different about this particular opening was that the people we spoke to were already sustainability enthusiasts, so the conversations were somewhat more relaxed and informative than the standard public display. Personally, I found it great to see the BYD Atto 3 in real life and finally meet the lovely owners of the first Model Y in New Zealand.
The Eco Centre has four aspirations:
- To educate and inform the South Canterbury public about a sustainable future;
- To enthuse and inspire through opportunity and by example;
- To facilitate ways in which businesses, industry, schools and the community can move to be more self-sufficient;
- To demonstrate and develop solutions to minimising waste and using locally-sourced resources.
