The document discusses the need to retrofit existing buildings to reduce demand for non-renewable resources. It then describes a "Plant Room" project that provides amenities like hot water, food growing space, and more to apartment residents while reducing energy and water usage. The project involves constructing two portable plant rooms - one exhibit unit and one for occupancy testing - to demonstrate sustainable building technologies and drive further development of the plant room concept. It requests help from local councils to promote the project and make the permitting process smoother given the experimental nature of the sustainable design.

1. “ We need to act with urgency on the retrofitting of the existing building stock in order to reduce its demand for non-renewable resources” Vale + Eason, A Critical Analysis of Sustainable Development: Buildings and Neighbourhoods in New Zealand , 2006

2. A Plant Room provides hot water for one occupant and a healthy growing space for herbs, fruit and vegetables all year round. It also offers a worm farm, a rainwater tank, an outdoor space and an enclosed room. It shades the apartment to avoid summer overheating and collects hot air to circulate warmth in the winter. It is designed to improve the quality of apartment living while reducing the energy and water use of it’s occupants. It could also be applied to office retro-fits.

3. We are building two Plant Rooms by November 2009: 1) A transportable version fitted to a shipping container that will be exhibited around Wellington Region (The Dowse, City Gallery, Cobblestone Park, Home Shows, Enviro Schools etc…) It will demonstrate technologies and products to the public. 2) An in-situ apartment version that will be occupied, monitored and tested to establish performance of the unit. It is hoped this will drive future development of The Plant Room as a affordably produced building product / system.

4. You can help the plant room… We would like to collaborate with Wellington City + Regional Councils to help promote the project. We need to lobby WCC to make the resource / building consent process run as smoothly and cheaply as possible. Given the experimental / sustainable nature of this project the planners have been extremely supportive but they feel with more support from up high - we may be able to avoid consent fees + lengthy building / resource consent application processes. We believe this project fits in well with the initiatives proposed in the climate change response paper and New Zealand’s commitment to be carbon neutral by 2020. We hope you will help support our cause…