Education: Tread lightly children

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Rolling into schools around Auckland is the first ever mobile environmental education classroom.

The Tread Lightly Caravan, or TLC, has been set up to help educate Auckland's primary and intermediate school students about the impacts their actions have on the environment and the importance of living sustainably.

Developed by the Urban Ecoliving Charitable Trust, the caravan includes exhibits like, "Your Environmental Footprint" where children use a touchscreen to answer questions about their lifestyle. Their carbon footprint is then expressed by showing how many of earth's resources would be used if everyone lived the same way.

The trust's executive director, Gael Ogilvie, says the caravan gives school children, aged eight to 12, an opportunity to learn in an interactive setting how everyday choices about what we buy, eat, how we heat our homes and how we travel, can alter the impact on the natural environment.

Made possible by the support of 3M New Zealand, ranked second most environmentally responsible company in the the world, additional funds have also come from the Tindall Foundation, Auckland Transport and The Trusts Charitable Foundation.

The caravan, since beginning its travels earlier this year, has been heavily booked for the remainder of 2011.

To find out more about the caravan go to: www.tread-lightly.org.nz