It's hoped that a new board game will play a part in future generations taking care of the planet.
Earthcare has been developed by Australian Lisa Wriley who has used New Zealand board game Conservation as her inspiration.
Wriley is in New Zealand now to help celebrate the birthday of the man who invented the original game.
Conservation board game Photo: supplied
Conservation, which was also known as the ‘tidy kiwi game’, was given to Wriley’s family in the ‘70s by friends.
Wriley tells Jesse Mulligan it has had a big impact on her since then.
“Years later, when I was teaching environmental education and campaigning for refunds on bottles and cans, whenever anybody asked me how did I possibly get into sorting rubbish and recycling and things like that, I always gave credit to this game.”
In 2019 when Wriley came to New Zealand, she made it her mission to track down the inventor, R.J. Reynolds.
“I didn’t know if they were still alive or if they were male or female, but I went up to Quaker Settlement in Whanganui.
“Within a day of showing people the game and saying I’m trying to find this person, I then linked up with people who had copies of the game in their cupboard, and also was on the phone to Bob [the inventor] in Nelson.”
Then she met Bob and shared with him her idea to reinvent the game for this generation.
“[I] had a lovely time hearing about all the other games he’d invented and getting to know him a little bit.
“Then I kept in contact ‘til the next year in emails and a year later, just before the pandemic set in, I came back over to Auckland and signed an intellectual property agreement with Bob.”
It’s been a long journey though, with one of the biggest challenges being trying to use recycled plastic, she says.
“I actually took several months to basically rule that out because of the tooling costs to the make the mould, to make the tokens, and to make the things was way beyond my kick-starter budget.
“So, I’ve gone to something I love from my childhood, pottery. So, I actually had clay handmade player pieces, with little footprints pressed into them with a stamp.”
She raised $25,000 through a crowd-funder in Australia last year to help put out the board game.
“It’s been very hands on, so friends helping make pedals, I’ve had the artwork done by a lovely young fellow, 20-year-old friend of mine, has done all the illustrations for me, I have an awesome local graphic artist.
“It’s almost all been made very locally, even the box is all out of recycled materials is made in Berkeley Vale near me, it’s only actually the top layer of the board that was printed in Newcastle and then that was glued to some recycled carboard in Sydney. So definitely all New South Wales-made, every single bit of it.”
About 300 boards have been sent out in Australia and there are plans for a foldable version too.
Wriley has also launched a pledgeme campaign to have a New Zealand version of Earthcare launched.
This time, she says, it will keep its original Conservation name and will also have te reo Maori translations.
“Bob’s messaging on the original game is incredibly so still relevant, I’ve only changed about five of the little squares on the board.
“In a way some people say he was really forward thinking but actually I think it just tells us that we’ve known for a long time what we need to do to look after the planet and we’re finally starting to see the problems really clearly about not taking action earlier.”
In New Zealand, $1 from every box game is donated to Keep NZ Beautiful.
