Scooters, skateboards and even hoverboards - they all appear to be replacing the humble bicycle as a popular mode of transport for children these days.
But the novelty of riding a bike has not yet worn off for pupils at Macandrew Bay School.
That's because they have attached a water pump to a bicycle frame, and pedalling it pumps water from a nearby water tank to the school's vegetable gardens.
Macandrew Bay School pupil Keiran Read said riding a bike and watering the gardens had never been so much fun.
"It's a bit tiring, but you can get through it if you just believe and keep going.''
Principal Bernadette Newlands said the bike pump was part of a school technology project, in which pupils had to investigate and solve an issue affecting the school.
One of the things they found was the school was treated as a business by the Dunedin City Council and, as such, it had to pay for all the water it used.
So, the pupils chose to pursue an environmental project in which water was collected from the roof of the school swimming pool, stored in a large water tank and used for watering the school's vegetable gardens.
Unfortunately, they encountered a spanner in the works.
The water tank was on the same level as the school vegetable gardens, which meant there was not enough gravity-fall to create the pressure required to send water from the tank, down the hose to the gardens.
So, the pupils came up with the idea of using pedal-power to pump the water down the hose.
The Macandrew Bay School bike pump was created by engineer and school parent, Gareth Pelvin.
"This project has been about how we can actually use people-power to get the energy to run the pump,'' Ms Newlands said.
"It's free energy and free water. The children are not taking water for granted. They now realise it doesn't just come from a tap.''
She believed the project was saving the school hundreds of dollars each year.
Ms Newlands said the vegetable gardens were important to the pupils because they were part of a cooking programme which taught them how to cook with the things grown in the gardens.
"It's a cycle - if the water's there, the plants grow, then the cooking happens and there's healthy outcomes for them.
"These are life skills. Vegetables don't just come from the supermarket.
"We're trying to teach them that you can grow things and eat them yourself if you do the right things.
"They realise that there are sustainable ways of harvesting resources and energy.''
