Mysterious castles, beautiful hiking trails and fabulous wine festivals: For an internship, I moved to the beautiful Palatinate region in the very West of Germany for three months. The office of the small company UDATA – Environment and Education is located in the idyllic town Neustadt an der Weinstraße, which is situated 30 km from Mannheim. UDATA has around 15 employees – depending how many projects they are working on – and quite a lot focal points. Climate, water or soil research, environmental education, data management or app development: UDATA has many projects.

When I was about to start my internship, I was very nervous. Having had only an interview on the phone, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I met a wonderful team with friendly and helpful people and I soon felt very comfortable about going to work. The team was also very supportive and tried to find work that matched my interest. I got the chance to work in different projects and to gain insights in various topics.

One of my tasks was to set up a website for a “Massive Open Online Course” (MOOC) about energy and business, but I was also involved in filming the lectures and setting up an additional course about climate change. Under www.energie-bwl.de (German version) and soon under www.energy-business.net (English version), you can learn everything a manager needs to know about energy. Controlling, facility management, logistics and green IT are closely related to energy consumption. In a changing world, the smart use of energy is a crucial ability for every business. Through filmed lectures and short animated videos you can learn all about energy and business. Are you also wondering why climate change is important? Have a look at the climate change course and find out!

In another project, an app called uRnature (we wrote about it in a previous article here) has been developed to bring young people in touch with nature again. With minigames and outdoor missions the app teaches youth about climate change andthe importance of forests. During my internship, I was not only writing texts for the app and helped debugging new versions, I was also involved in the marketing: I was allowed to plan and carry out two major marketing activities, including advertisement and a prize competition on-site the outdoor missions.

UDATA offers guided tours for kindergardeners and school kids through a waste-to-energy plant in Ludwigshafen (find out about the waste cemetery here) in order to teach children how to separate waste and raise awareness for trash avoidance. Luckily I also got the chance to to participate in these tours as well. And it was my task to take care of the ghost insects in the office. (Those were shown to the children in the waste-to-energy plant, to make them understand how animals deal with their waste). There were also some smaller projects such as designing an info panel for the newest outdoor mission of uRnature and a flyer about sustainable consumption. Additionally, UDATA is creating some maps in QGIS for a project aiming to provide a detailed map of bicycle paths all over Germany.

Due to the diverse and instructive tasks as well as due to the good work environment, I enjoyed my time at UDATA very much. The Palatinate region is also guaranteeing a high quality of life: The closeness to France, the beautiful landscapes, the friendly people. Thus, I am sure I have not been there for the last time and can only recommend it to others to do their internship there.

The post Internship at UDATA GmbH – Environment and Education appeared first on Global Change Ecology.

Having found your way to our blog, you probably know the answers. But how can we start a dialogue with others, who might be less interested? With a generation, that has grown up with smartphones and is increasingly disconnected with nature? With young people who might not have access to environmental education? One answer might be: By using our smartphone affinity and creating an app that answers questions and informs about climate change in a playful way.

The App uRnature was developed by Udata – Environment and Education GmbH , where I did an internship for three months. (A report about my internship there is coming soon!) During the internship, I was able to gain many insights into app development, but also how knowledge can be transferred without being “boring”. As conventional nature education offers are often used by people already interested in the environment,a new approach is necessary. And uRnature is one of the first approaches in Germany to use an app to bring young people back in contact with nature.

Chat with U and find out how the world could look like in 2050. Or play minigames. (Screenshot: uRnature)

Guess correctly and avoid sea level rise or discover how the world could look like in 2050. Can you prevent a climate disaster?

uRnature offers two possible play modes: First of all there are minigames, that can be played everywhere. Guess the climate change terms correctly in Climate Change Hangman, and help the tourist escape from sea level rise. If you guess wrong, the temperature is increasing and the sea is rising… Or save our woods by catching all harmful bork beetles. But be careful not to kill the useful checkered-beetle. The games aim to entertain, while simultaneously providing information and (fun) facts about the most important concepts around climate change and forest. To learn more, you can chat with U from 2050. Living in a world destroyed by climate change and degradation, U needs your help. By choosing your answers you can decide how the story ends…

Climate Change Hangman. Guess the term correctely or the sea level will rise. (Screenshot: uRnature)

Are you brave enough to go outside and fulfill your mission?

uRnature provides also so-called virtual, GPS based missions that need be played on-site. Almost like Pokemon Go, the player has to go outside and fulfill certain tasks in nature at the virtual stations. Following usually already established educational trails, the mission asks the player to find certain trees, guess their age, answer questions or play a minigame. Currently there are missions in Berlin, Brandenburg and in Rheinland-Pfalz. (And, unfortunately, the app is only available in German.) But more missions are to come!

uRnature is a unique approach to bringing young people back to nature. To inform about some of the most crucial topics in our time. And even though you might say we should enjoy our environment without technology, maybe we have to combine both to find our way back to nature.

Find out more:

Website: https://urnature.de/
Like the app on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urnatureapp/
Playstore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.urnature

The post Your climate. Your app. uRnature. appeared first on Global Change Ecology.

The trash cementary can be found in outdoor classroom of the waste-to-energy plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany (Gemeinschafts-Müllheizkraftwerk Ludwigshafen GmbH (GML)). Thanks to their environmental education concept, young people from kindergarten to senior grade can visit the GML and learn what happens with their trash, why it is important to separate waste and how it can be used to produce heat and energy. The concepts were developed by the University of Landau and adjusted to the different age groups: Kids from kindergarten learn the very basics of waste separation (how and why?), older children can study the operating principle of a steam engine. And one highlight is always the terrarium with living stick insects. Are they producing waste as well? What happens then? And who is brave enough to hold one?

Learning how to separate waste. (Photo: Katharina Funk)

During their day at the GML, the visitors get a tour through the plant and learn how the waste can still be used and what happens with the leftover slag. 200 000 tons of waste, more precisely residual waste, are delivered every year – produced by 800.000 people. Up to 110 trucks are arriving every day, loading off the waste of Ludwigshafen but also of other near cities. The visitors get a chance to catch a glimpse into the refuse bunker and see the enormous cranes at work. They can also meet the crane operators and observe closely how they grab the waste and toss it into the combustion chamber. The waste is burned twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, as it is quite expensive to shut the plant down. The temperatures in the oven reach up to 1000 °C – enough to burn plastic and aluminum, but not enough to melt iron. The emerging heat is then used to produce energy and district heat. Up to 70 million kWh can be produced in the plant every year – that is enough to provide 17500 average households (four persons) with energy. But besides energy also     60 000 tons of slag (i.e. the ash that is left over after burning) are produced every year. As there are still toxic substances left in the slag, it is quite hard to put it to a good use. A certain part is used for road construction, the rest has to be stored in huge landfills.

Inside the waste-to-energy plant: Refuse bunker and buring chamber. (Photo: Katharina Funk)

To reduce the amount of slag (that cannot really be used for anything else), it is on the one hand important to separate waste – because a lot of waste is recyclable. Organic waste can be put on a compost and or in a biogas plant. Plastic can be melted down and form new plastic-things. Paper can be reused as well. (By the way, a great way to preserve the environment is to buy recycled toilet paper.)

But it is also essential to reduce the amount of waste you are producing. Some things cannot be recycled and have to be burned. Currently, one third of the waste is turned into toxic slag. To avoid that, we all need to try to reduce our waste production.

“You want to tell me that earth is actually the poo of earthworms?”

Let’s come back to the trash cemetery. Visitors of the GML are allowed to dig in the graves and find out what happened with the waste. The younger children are always astonished when they can’t find anything in the grave of kitchen wastes. The newspaper from 2002 is gone as well. But the plastic bottle – having been in the earth for 18 years – is still there, almost unchanged, as well as the can and the shampoo bottle. It is an impressive sight, and we should keep this in mind, when going to the supermarket for the next time and have the choice between the cute snack-tomatoes in a plastic box or the loose egg tomatoes, still attached to the little green branch.

A can, buried in 2011 (left) and a ghost insect (right) . (Photo: Katharina Funk)

To not to choke in a giant mountain of waste and trash, we must change the way we consume. This article is the part of a series dealing with the chaotic and broad topic of waste. We want to give you different views on the topic and highlight ways how to reduce your personal waste generation. Find more articles here.

The post The trash cementary or how to separate waste appeared first on Global Change Ecology.

The Landesnaturschutzverband Baden-Württemberg e.V. (LNV)

In Baden-Württemberg, one of the 16 German states, there are 3 large nature conservation organizations: the BUND, the NABU and the LNV. LNV is an umbrella organization with 33 member organizations including nature conservation organizations, fishing, hunting and hiking organizations.

“Sometimes there are conflicts between freetime activities like mountain biking, climbing, diving and nature conservation”, explains Gerhard Brönner, director of the LNV in Baden-Württemberg.  “The LNV tries to find solutions together with all stakeholders. Nature conservation is successful only when it follows the principle “use it or lose it”. For this reason, it has to provide benefits to everybody, otherwise it is not effective in the long run.”.

Since those associations have different opinions and ideas, the LNV mediated the creation of agreements consisting of position papers followed by the 33 organizations. These position papers are important for county working groups as they serve as a directing line for working volunteers. Brönner deplored the recent difficulty to find new volunteers:

“Most of the work is done by volunteers. That is why it is essential for us to find dedicated people. Sometimes we have the chance to be in contact with relevant persons and try to get them to volunteer at the LNV, retired public servant for instance”, he says. According to Brönner, the LNV  is recently facing difficulties to engage young people in nature conservation.

“I guess it’s due to new technology distractions, a lack of commitment or a change in generation mindset and interests”, he says.

With so many different stakeholders it takes a long time and effort to develop a common position paper — the last one took about 1 year to be written. LNV was facing difficulties with a hunting regulation, but it finally found an agreement pleasing everybody. Some of these positions are very sensible and if one of the member organization has a different opinion it cannot speak about it in the name of the LNV. It has to stay in a “grey zone” with its own opinion. However, most of the time the 33 organizations cooperate and stay united to defend their view in front of the politicians.

Budget, funding and subvention

The LNV is mainly financed by the local state subventions and organization membership fees. “The state budget varies and has to be approved annually, it is rarely sufficient”,  complains Brönner.

Each of the 33 organizations belonging to the LNV pays a membership fee based on their size, which means based on the  number of individuals in the organization. Usually only NGOs can be members, nonetheless individuals can support the LNV by paying an annual membership fee of 300€. “Those supporting individual members don’t have any voting rights. In addition, they have to be approved by the LNV’s executive board to avoid any conflict of interest. For the same reason, the LNV refuses money from companies and corporate. Unlike famous international foundations such as WWF and Greenpeace sponsored by rich donors and organizations, we prefer to be as independent as possible. Even if we received two third of our budget from state subventions, we would still criticize it openly and freely”, the director of the LNV says.

For specific projects requiring extra expenses, the LNV raises fundings through donation campaigns. “Although donations vary, most of the fundings are constant over time as public subvention and membership fees are fixed”, says Brönner. All this money is used by the LNV to act politically as a lobbyist,  so that they can pay their office staff and defray their volunteer expenses.

LNV’s role at the state level

The LNV is a consulting organization, it doesn’t deal with practical environmental protection but gives detailed opinions about projects impacting nature and organizes lobbying legal actions. Currently, there is one court case against a windmill built in an area of the red kite (Milvus milvus).

Although the planning process was done by the company together with the public and the local authorities, the planning documents were never made public. Since the windmill was composed of less than 20 turbines, the LNV had access to the planning documents only at the court. The windmill project documents contained weaknesses and the LNV asked the court to review its decision about the construction project.

The LNV aims to  mediate conflicts between renewable energy and nature conservation. The organization ensures that wind turbines don’t harm migrating birds, bioenergy land doesn’t compete with food production and hydroenergy doesn’t disturb aquatic wildlife…

“On the one hand, we don’t have enough space in Baden-Württemberg to produce all the energy we need. On the other hand, in the north-western states of Germany there is more electricity produced than needed. To solve our energy problem, there is a project to bring electricity from Morocco with windmill on the coastline and solar panels in the Sahara. Only 5–10 % of the electricity would be lost during the transport and it could provide energy to all Europe” says Bronner.

The LNV helps county administrations create landscape conservation unions and mediate nature conservation actions between towns, farmers and conservationists. It also tries to convince the state government to provide funding for every county to have his union. Since there is an increasing demand of space for infrastructures and settlements, the LNV ensures the efficient use of the scarce urban land and abundant cheap rural land. “In the countryside, we try to integrate agriculture with nature conservation. We try to make farmers have a more biodiversity friendly and still economically viable management. We need to change the policy and get away from the current agri-environment scheme which subsidizes farmers on a hectare based evaluation”, Brönner says.

To control the implementation of impact compensation in the state of Baden-Württemberg, the LNV is also creating a system where all compensation measures are documented.

Once per year, in autumn, the LNV holds the “Zukunftsforum” or translated “Forum of the Future”. The aim is to bring different stakeholders together to discuss about pressing issues: last year’s conference, for example, they discussed about the declining insect diversity. Two years ago, the forum was about environmental education and the LNV tried to convince the local government to put back the basic identification of plants and insect families into the school curriculum.

“In the forum we promoted so called Naturpark schools which are primary schools in the south of the Black Forest where children go outside and learn practical subjects about nature. Pupils also meet rangers, foresters and carpenters to widen their view on the world”, says Brönner. “Nonetheless it is difficult to create these schools because teachers lack training about nature. Thus, they are afraid to go out of the school because of security and responsibility issues. Not to mention the difficulty to get parent permission and logistic funding. Another problem is the lack of experts in various conservation fields, people who know the insect or plant species. This is mainly due of the low wages in this sector.”

LNV’s role at the national and European level

As mentioned before, the LNV is a state run organization. Nonetheless, at the federal level, the LNV is part of the “Deutscher Naturschutzring” (translated German nature conservation ring) organization which assesses and shares the most efficient policies and practices among states.

“The Deutscher Naturschutzring regularly publishes reports and organizes meetings, so there is a communication between Federal states. A good example is a recent study searching for the best conservation regulations among states. We submitted the best ones to the Ministry of Baden-Württemberg and some were added in the state law.”, Brönner says.

The organization reminds the state government about their commitment to European environmental laws such as the Habitat, Birds directives and Natura 2000, in extreme cases it can complain to the European court of justice in Brussels.

To conclude, I would like to remind all of us that “alone we go faster, but together we go further “.

If we want our Earth and people to go far, we will need to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize partnerships. Organizations like the LNV are already doing this, enhancing cooperation between different stakeholders and acting for sustainable development and use of Central European landscapes.

Written by Thuan SARZYNSKI

The post Inside a German Organization of Nature Conservation appeared first on Global Change Ecology.

Why do you want to create something epic? You say on your website you want to create something “better than reality”.

Von Wong: There are lots of documentary photographers out there, capturing great stories. I think it is important to always have a different approach. Documentaries have a very important but also a very different way to communicate with people and reach a different sort of demographic which is important. To create these epic stories, just happens to be something that I am particularly good at. I try to educate through adventure and I found that the internet likes things that are really flashy and it’s something they have never seen before. It is an effective way to communicate with an audience that is not already interested.

Your picture with a mermaid drowning in plastic bottles was exhibited at the UN Environmental Assembly in Nairobi last year. Do you see yourself as an environmentalist?

They reached out for me and asked if they could use my latest work on plastic pollution. In the end, they used around seven or eight of my pictures, some of the plastic pollution topic and some others about toxic laundry. I wasn’t invited to Nairobi unfortunately, so I did not attend the assembly. But this is what I try to do: I want my images to help people who are struggling to get their message out there. I don’t necessarily consider myself as an environmentalist, there are so many amazing environmentalists doing far more than me. At the end of the day, I am just somebody trying to do positive things with the skills I have.

How do you create an interaction between your art and people, outside of social media?

I am more focused on the online engagement for now. In the future, I would like to get more into creating installations. That is what I am doing right now: Creating installations – and after the work we destroy it. So, in many ways, I am creating temporary art installations and I would love to find a way for them to live on. The problem is that it costs a lot of money, you need a place to store it, exhibit it… Hopefully someday someone is going to say: “Hey, let’s make it something more permanent!”

Sometimes, for example with the mermaid and the plastic pollution, we transform the work into educational posters which you can buy then. And I think, we are going to do the same with the e-waste posters, so that everyone can buy it without making profit. For now, the only way to own one of the pictures is either as a gift or if it is related with charity. Maybe one day, when I become a starving artist, then I might sell them. (laughs)

Who supports you in your complex photoshoots?

Mostly it is all done by volunteers. People I never met before text me that they want to help. Mostly I post something on social media asking if anyone is in town and wants to help and people just show up. For the e-waste project, there were about 50 volunteers.

You have a background in engineering and are now a photographer – when did conservation and social aspects become important for your work?

It was about two or three years ago when I was getting off the back of a large campaign and it felt meaningless to only do advertising. So, I started to search for a purpose and tried different ways – in the beginning I was doing documentary videos and I decided I wasn’t that good at it. So, I decided to do my crazy photography instead. (laughs)

The goal right now is to get cooperation to start supporting global campaigns. And as we are starting to get more conscious, people will start to care more about what a company stands for and not just about the final product. We live in a global economy and as everyone is doing basically the same, it becomes more about what they support, what their values are. I want to get these companies more involved – something like social capitalism. (laughs)

For me, it is a little harder to work with the establishment in the conservation field because they already have their way to do things. That is why I want to concentrate on good corporate behaviour. Instead of always pointing the finger on how companies are doing the bad thing, I want to do the reverse and reward the ones doing good things. I want to bring big brands to spending more money on social impact – it’s not about taking the brands that are already doing a lot in that area but trying to encourage those who don’t have it as a primary focus.

Adidas for example, recently launched that by 2025 they want 100% of their footwear to be made from ocean plastic – these are the kind of initiatives that will carry us into the next century. If more big brands do it, more little brands will follow, too.

Do you think that companies are shifting towards “good” attitudes?

They have to because the world is going to shift. (laughs) Maybe the next 20 years they can go on like now but in the next 50 years, they can’t. Sooner or later, the world has to make this shift. And I want to accelerate this and be on that side of the battle when it comes.

In your last project about e-waste, Dell lent you all the electronic materials you needed – and took it back afterwards to recycle them. How does this recycling look like?

They sort the material and break it down to smaller parts. We were at the facility in McKinney, Texas. There, they took all the metal parts and run it through a metalogical process to separate all different types of materials. After the recycling, less than one percent of the materials goes to the landfill. It was very impressive!

Do you know what is the impact of your pictures outside of social media?

It is hard to tell who we reach. But for this campaign we are giving away a postcard for everyone who donates their electronic waste. We have 1000 postcards to give away but so far, we have no calculations about how many items we collected. I hope to have in the end a huge amount of extra recycling as the result of this campaign.

Do you see a change in awareness caused by your pictures?

There are always positive and negative reactions. Lots of parents and teachers are excited about it because they can show it to their students and it is very interesting for them to engage with it in a different way. But how do measure the efficiency of art? That is really hard.

Any ideas for new projects already?

I always like to tackle different problems with every project. So, I am always coming up with different ideas – there are like 20 different ideas in my mind. (laughs) It is then important to figure out the one that works out and finding the right people to collaborate with, finding the right stories to tell.

e-Waste, sharks, plastic bottles – they don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other. Where and how do you get your inspiration?

With the work I do, I try to connect with different people who care about the same things. Often, they say “Hey, I saw your work, would you like to talk?” and I just say yes to everybody – and sometimes, the project becomes real. One of the projects that we are launching next month was similar: We got access to a huge facility in Cambodia to raise awareness for the environmental costs of fast fashion – just because I talked to this one girl by chance. It is always about finding the people who are passionate about making a difference. We will publish our project about this probably close to Earth Day on April 22nd.

Do you have a message you would like to spread?

Participate in the challenge, recycle your e-waste, get a free card at rethinkandrecycle.com!

Thank you for your time, Benjamin!

Thank you so much!

The post “I want to reward companies with a good impact” appeared first on Global Change Ecology.