World Oceans Day campaign in the bag

Date:  13 June 2013

World Oceans Day colouring competition winners in front of their entries with New World Proprietor, Gary Lee, and designer, Sue Asplin.

The joint organisers of the World Oceans Day Reusable Bag Campaign, Hokitika's New World and DOC, were delighted with the response from local shoppers.  Several hundred shoppers using reusable bags last week qualified for the draw for a $100 grocer voucher. 

There was also a huge response for the Colouring Competition from local children aged 2 to 13 years.

It was a tough decision for the judges who had to choose only six winners spread across age groups from nearly 150 entries.  The judges from DOC were impressed by the quality of the entries and found it very hard to narrow it down to just a few, so, after a bit of deliberating, they chose another nine entries as Highly Commended.

The message about reusable bags was a dominant feature on the colouring sheet, so the judges were looking for entries that made the lettering easy to read from a distance.  They were also looking for colour schemes that stood out and highlighted the marine life that is under threat from plastic, good coverage of colour, and an original picture of the entrant as a ‘Reusable Bag Superhero’.

Winners were presented with reusable shopping bags full of goodies donated by Hokitika New World on Wednesday.   DOC helped to fill the bags with a few art supplies to keep these talented young artists busy.  Highly commended entries received a small bag of goodies from DOC and Westpac.

DOC Ranger, Sue Asplin, who created the competition, said:

“Thank you to all the kids who entered the competition and shared their talents with us.  We hope it helped children to understand the need to use fewer throw-away plastic bags because there is already enough plastic in the world, and sometimes these bags escape from our rubbish and cause havoc in the ocean.  Through this campaign we hope that children will be the voice for the future and encourage their parents to take reusable bags when they do the grocery shopping.”

DOC Ranger, Inger Perkins and New World Proprietor, Gary Lee do the draw

Winners were as follows:

10-12 years
Winner:                         Caitlyn McAuliffe (12)
High Commended:        Indica Thompson (11); Joane Pieterse (10)

7-9 years
Winners:                       Ella Candlish (9); Anika Ngaamo (8)
Highly Commended:      Jorja Sinclair-Fearn (8); Sasha Challenger (7)

5-7 years
Winners:                      Caelan Joel Bond (5); Ella Tacon (5)
Highly Commended:      Bruce Miller (5); Sioban Thornley (5); Fin McClunie (6);  Pyper Nanckivell (6)

Under 5 years
Winner:                         Tim Maitland (4)
Highly Commended:      Zara Rose-Erskine (4)

And the winner of the $100 voucher: Lynne Hawkins.

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