Index – Brands and Content – Finding Earth Champions

The second year of E.ON’s 25 million sustainable development tender is once again targeting school and kindergarten communities; the winning communities will each receive up to 2.5 million HUF in support to further expand their green projects.

Who will be this year’s Champion of the Earth?

The Champions of the Earth competition has announced for the second consecutive year that its main goal is to make sustainable, environmentally friendly and climate-conscious methods fall in love with and pass on to a younger and still receptive generation. They support initiatives where children, teachers and even parents and grandparents work together on various topics of environmental sustainability. This joint work, through the knowledge gained through experience, helps to form children’s attitudes towards environmental responsibility and through them towards the wider environment.

The applications were evaluated by a diverse and professional jury. The jury included: Dr. Diána Ürge-Vorsatz (physicist, Vice-President of the UN Climate Reporting Agency), Réka Nagy (journalist alias Ökoanyu), Katalin Szomolányi (Executive Director of the Planet Fanatics Network), Lia Pokorny (actress, author of the sustainable recipe book Tomorrow Will Still Be), and most importantly Guntram Würzberg, CEO of E.ON Hungary Group. The jury also prepared a shortlist of 22 applications, one of which was selected Public voting could make you one of the winnersThis is a public vote.

The campaign will run on E.ON’s Facebook page until June 21.

“I can ride my bike even when it’s cold and rainy”

There are many small steps we can take to reduce overconsumption and air pollution, and one of the best and even enjoyable ways is to not drive, but to ride a bike, walk, scooter or skateboard. In addition, regular exercise keeps our bodies in check, reduces stress and saves money on road trips. Not surprisingly, one of last year’s winners built their app around this as well, and the kids were clearly very enthusiastic about it. Then a World Champion Taksonyi German National Kindergarten The emphasis is on car-free and healthy transport, bicycles and scooters. Since then, the children have been working hard to ride their bikes, as everyone who rides a bike receives a stamp when they arrive at the kindergarten. At the end of the year, two brand new scooters will be drawn up among the healthiest skiers. This initiative is not only forward-thinking, but also very popular with the children, among whom there is also a participant, who is always ready to fight the elements and stays by the bike on the way to the kindergarten, if it rains or is windy.

Among this year’s participants, bicycles also play a major role in a kindergarten across the Danube, where a complex series of activities, bicycle education and the construction of a bicycle track together with parents are also planned for September.

Let’s go study outdoors!

“Children need nature like a mouthful of bread,” pediatrician Herbert Renz-Polster wrote in his book Back to the Roots, co-authored with neurologist Gerald Hüther. He stressed that children’s natural environment is both the outdoors and a natural tool for learning.

Last year, applicants who designed small gardens or taught children to live in harmony with nature also achieved good results. In last year’s and this year’s ideas, diverse and very exciting concepts were created. Let’s take a look at one example from last year and two examples from this year!

The 2023 Earth Champion has revealed that plants can be grown using a sandbox-sized device, rather than any other method. Tender from Sakadi KindergartenThe planners also set up a kindergarten vegetable garden, barefoot paths and community waste collection with the participation of parents. According to the kindergarten director, one of the biggest successes was the child-sized gardening tools, small rakes, watering cans, mini buckets, which allowed the kindergarten children to easily and confidently sow seeds and take care of the saplings in the garden. Raised beds.

This year’s applicant, a primary school in a small town near the capital, wants to build an open-air classroom with a small pond and surrounding raised beds suitable for a vegetable garden. The lake is perfect for children to observe and care for the plant communities in the wetland, the insects that come to the water, and the fish and other creatures that live in the water every day. The school also wants to create a forest learning trail.

He will also start this year to build a bird- and insect-friendly garden in the Trans-Danube kindergarten and nursery area. The idea involves planting native shrubs, building a small garden with herbs and spices and deep mulching soil, as well as DIY bird feeders and insect hotels. In addition to the hands-on education, the children will visit a bird sanctuary and a nature reserve to see how professionals do it all.

The old and the new, or the importance of recycling

The EU’s goal is to move towards a so-called circular economy. This means that we should not be constantly extracting resources, but rather use what we already have and waste as little as possible. So, for example, clothes, plastics, metals, wood and many other raw materials can and should be reused. This saves a lot of energy, reduces the ecological footprint and does not harm nature through mining and pollution.

For example, in a high school in Budapest, they plan to build a greenhouse with compost heating, which will surely be exciting, and the children will learn about the mysteries of plant cultivation and recycling through gardening courses. The project will combine the pursuit of self-sustainability, the use of alternative energy sources and recycling, which is an outstanding example of how green technology can be effectively presented.

In a primary school in Zara, PET bottles and waste management were used as the basis for creating a tender green project. The children collected soda bottles into wooden containers, after processing them, they made durable plastic objects with the help of a 3D printer: plant stakes, incubators, windmills, water droppers. This idea not only illustrates circular agriculture well, but also contributes greatly to the formation of the children’s worldview and provides them with professional orientation that they can use later in life.

As you can see here, there is no shortage of great ideas, and we can even try and implement a large number of them ourselves. We can get a lot of ideas, as there are many more colorful applications on the shortlist for the Champions of the Earth vote, but at least Let’s vote as much as possibleso that the best and most valuable applications can receive financial support.

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