South Coast Environment Society

The South Coast Environment Society's vision is "a connected and flourishing Southland where there are leaders, resources, systems and examples available to assist and support people and communities to adopt resilient lifestyles and care for and about their environment."

Our Environment Centre in Riverton will have been open for 30 years in June 2026! The Centre is a base for our projects and is largely staffed by volunteers, enabling it to be open seven days per week. The Centre has great displays and resources for many aspects of eco-friendly lifestyles. It also hosts the Riverton Organic Food Co-op, a not-for-profit shop making organic food available at the lowest prices possible.

We have paid admin staff that manage our diverse projects from the Centre.

We run several annual events:

The Riverton Heritage Harvest Festival, the last weekend in March;

A Heritage Fruit Tree Sale, the first weekend in August;

Bountiful Backyards Spring Gardening Workshop Weekend, in mid-October.

Our main projects:

'Open Orchard Project' preserving heritage fruit tree varieties;

'The Longwood Loop', local food resilience network;

'Southland Seed Savers' network;

'Community Compost', composting education;

'Community Forest Garden', now 15 years old;

The full list of projects you can donate to is on our website, let us know which project you want to support: https://www.sces.org.nz/projects