They say the pathway to leadership is through service, and that’s why there is no greater tanga than tea-towel-tanga. With disposable single-use plastic plates and cutlery featuring more and more on the tables of our homes and wharekai, Para Kore thought it was time for an overdue reminder about the importance of doing the dishes.

Growing up, doing the dishes is a rite of passage, whether in the wharekai during a tangihanga, at home after a huge Christmas hākari or away on school camp – there’s something to be cherished in those minutes (sometimes hours) shared with siblings, cousins, friends and classmates; singing waiata and arguing over who is washing, who is drying and who gets arguably the best job of all, putting the dishes away.

There’s no better teacher than a scrubbing brush, and many lessons are learned in the kitchen. If those kitchen walls could talk, they would tell you of the sharing, gossip, laughter, debriefing, and occasional tears – all from the humble yet critical mahi that leads to a clean and tidy kitchen.

If you sit back and reminisce about some of your special memories, you may find that some of them were created around a stainless steel sink. Reusable real crockery dishes build whanaungatanga, manaakitanga, and responsibility!

However, now more and more, there’s a thief called ‘convenience’ who is stealing this from us. Convenience has sucked us in and is selling us single-use, disposable plates and cutlery.

Making single-use disposables that you will only use once is pōrangi. That’s because single-use plates and cutlery take massive amounts of energy, pollution, and waste to extract the trees, produce the plates, and distribute the plates for sale. The plate is only used for ten minutes or so before it’s thrown out. Once again, those single-use disposables hit the road, first into a black bag and then onto a rubbish truck, often travelling hundreds of kilometres to be dumped into a landfill – usually owned by an international company that makes big money off our wasteful ways.

Doing the right thing by the taiao is often about doing things in the old ways, such as washing and drying dishes. Doing the right thing by the taiao doesn’t have to be overwhelming or expensive, nor should it be about using fancy eco-stuff, driving an EV or drinking from expensive water bottles. Being conscious of our consumption (means all the stuff we buy and use) is about using what we already have: making do, teaching our tamariki and rangatahi the ways of the kitchen, and using the plates in our cupboards, washing and drying them and putting them back to be used again – that is a circular system – that’s how our atua roll, everything is a circular system of life. E te whānau, save money and leave those eco-friendly compostable plates where they belong – on the supermarket shelf.

Next time your whānau is preparing for a birthday, reunion or tangihanga, crack out the crockery plates, the silverware or the stainless steel cutlery and a tea towel. You’ll save money, honour Papatūānuku, strengthen whanaungatanga and reinforce mātāpono like humility, manaakitanga and kaitiakitanga in your whare.

Don’t get sucked into single-use.
Horoia ngā rīhi e te whānau, do the dishes.