Looking for good solutions to climate protection? Let's ask young people!

In the myclimate climate education programme Young Climathon young people find climate protection solutions for real problems of regional partners from administration and business. The common goal: to plan and implement concrete climate protection measures. This was precisely the motto of the Young Climathon in the MEWA Arena with myclimate education partner 1. FSV Mainz 05 e.V.

At the Mainz Climate Defenders Week, six so called "challenge-donors" each presented a sustainability problem from their company and guided the approximately 150 participants from twelve schools in finding creative solutions. This means that twice as many pupils took part in the Young Climathon as last year.

In small groups, the students first systematically analysed the problem and thought their way into the affected interest groups. In the second part, the coaches helped them develop concrete proposals for solutions. These were then presented to a jury in 90-second pitches.

In addition to climate friendliness, the feasibility and innovativeness of the solutions were also taken into account when evaluating the ideas, as well as the questions of how effective they are and whether they motivate participation through direct benefits.

"I am always amazed at the commitment and inventiveness with which young people find solutions for the future. You can literally feel the creativity in the air when the students devote themselves completely to the tasks and experience real participation. The Young Climathon makes young people so strong for the challenges of tomorrow and brings their solutions to real life," says Thomas Lanners, Team Leader Education at myclimate Germany.

For example, some of the groups in the Kyocera project were concerned with making printer packaging more climate-friendly. Here, compostable cardboard boxes based on grass fibres, or "grass cardboard boxes" for short, were particularly convincing to the expert jury led by Niko Bungert (club coach Mainz 05), Stephan Bandholz (director of arena management and sustainability at Mainz 05), Stefan Baumeister (managing director of myclimate Germany) and Jessica Maudrich (education project manager at myclimate).

Other ideas were:

The climate savings pig for the employees of BITO-Lagertechnik Bittmann GmbH: If the energy consumption in the daily work routine decreases, the cost savings go into the climate savings pig, which is used, for example, to finance sustainable team-building events for the staff.
An incentive to save paper for members of the ACV Automobil-Club Verkehr: Here, members who order the ACV magazine "Profil" only as a digital edition benefit from bonus content. In this way, over 2 million printed magazines per year could be dispensed with in the medium term.
The EnteGO app for ENTEGA AG employees: This can be used to organise car pools or to register the kilometres travelled by bicycle. Those who participate receive discounts in the canteen, for example.
"Plantthefuture" was the motto of the Challenge's winning group from accadis Hochschule Bad Homburg: a tree-planting campaign flanked by a social media campaign with 1. FSV Mainz 05 e.V. to raise awareness of the university's educational forest in the Taunus region and increase student participation in shaping the forest.

It was the second time that myclimate presented the Young Climathon in cooperation with the Bundesliga club FSV Mainz 05. The Young Climathon is a cross-sector climate education programme developed by myclimate that links regional partners from administration and business with school classes from 10th grade onwards. The principle of solution-based learning applies, according to which the learners should find a solution to a given problem largely on their own and arrive at the solution in a self-directed, interdisciplinary and discovery-based manner.

Would you also like to plan a Young Climathon with your company or educational institution? Then please contact us:

Thomas Lanners
Team Leader Education myclimate Germany
Tel.: 07121 31777523
thomas.lanners@myclimate.de

Pictures: Mainz 05 and myclimate