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Biting temperatures, chilly winds and moody, wet skies: these are just some of the excuses you might use to avoid an outdoor workout in winter.
But there are far more reasons – physical and mental – to lace up your runners. And for Victorians in lockdown, options are limited. So the trick is to know how to motivate yourself and remove the barriers stopping you from getting out the door.
Tessa Gould, a member of Run Like A Girl in Kensington, runs four times a week through winter.
Credit:Joe Armao
First, shift your mindset
Tamara Cavenett, clinical psychologist and president of the Australian Psychological Society, jokes that because we are blessed with a warmer climate than many countries, Australians tend to be “fair weather exercisers”. It’s true that the darker months can affect mood, but Cavenett – who runs outside 4-5 times a week in Adelaide – encourages people to embrace seasonal changes rather than dread winter.
In 2019, Kāinga Ora pledged to build houses above the minimums set by the Building Code, choosing the NZ Green Building Council’s rating tool and aiming for Homestar 6 (or “good” on the 10-point scale). Shaw said the extra costs to meet this standard for new social housing had been less than first expected. “This comes as no surprise to me, but it’s been a lot cheaper to introduce that standard universally across all new builds than people were saying at first… It’s not going to take much to then leap-frog to one of the highest possible standards,” he added.
Green Building: Cutting carbon-embodied emissions
5 May, 2021 05:00 PM
3 minutes to read
By: Graham Skellern
Warren and Mahoney has launched a three-year PhD study to produce a framework for reducing carbon emissions in the design of buildings.
The thesis is titled: Starting a new paragraph in designing low carbon architecture in New Zealand.
Fiona Short, associate principal with Warren and Mahoney, said if we are to reach our climate change targets in New Zealand and internationally, we need to understand the full picture of embodied carbon in buildings (emissions associated with building materials such as steel, concrete and carpet). At present the industry focus is on operational carbon use, but as our buildings become more energy efficient the carbon emitted to create the materials becomes more important.
The education minister, Chris Hipkins, has announced that Latin will no longer be an NCEA subject by 2023. Hipkins cited poor student uptake as the main reason behind the change: only around 200 students from 10 schools around Aotearoa take NCEA Latin, and only about 25 at level 3. However, even if it s a language whose spoken applications have long since died off, Latin is still all around us – from the legal system, to medicine, zoology, botany, religious studies. Thousands of words we use in everyday conversation trace their roots back to Latin. So, is there still merit in offering a subject which might not land you a job, but might enhance your understanding of the world?
Latin has been struck off the NCEA list, but its disappearance will be mourned by many who say it lives on in everyday English, and it's vital to some professions.