Climate team draws attention to environmental action days

"Every bite counts. Protect what you eat - protect our Earth". This is the motto of this year's Earth Day on 22 April 2021, followed by "Renewable Energy Day" on 24 April 2021 - important topics that should not be neglected amidst the issues of the all-dominant corona pandemic. Climate and environmental protection will continue to be topical when the pandemic has long been defeated, the climate team of the Waldeck-Frankenberg district points out

"Restore our Earth" is the official motto of the international Earth Day, putting sustainable nutrition in the spotlight. Consumers, food trade, agriculture and food production - everyone can make a contribution and get involved in global resource conservation. Thomas Dannenmann, President of Earth Day, emphasises the great importance of our eating and consumption habits:

"Unfortunately, sustainable consumption is often associated with personal renunciation. However, a climate-friendly approach to food does not mean doing without, but first and foremost switching to a resource-conserving way of life, which can be a great benefit."

Everyone should pay attention to where and how food is grown, produced, processed and transported. Three keywords should be important in daily shopping: regional, fair, organic. When looking in the fridge, it is easy to think about which products can be replaced by an organic product. Chia seeds from South America could just as well be replaced by good old flax seeds... two examples of how we can all make a big difference with a small contribution.

Sustainable consumption means, above all, reducing packaging waste where feasible, buying food from the region, preferring seasonal and organic food, using local woods instead of tropical woods, reducing meat consumption, paying attention to longevity when buying, doing without and reducing consumption, preferring quality instead of quantity - especially in clothing -, looking for manual alternatives for electrical appliances or preferring small and energy-efficient electrical appliances and avoiding products that contain palm oil.

Saving electricity for the sake of the environment and relying on renewable energies - this is a concern for more than half of Germans, as recent surveys show. This year's motto of the Energy Saving Day and the associated campaign week is "Energiewende - Gemeinsam packen wir's an!". Renewable energies are now the central pillar of the energy transition and, with a share of around 46 percent, are the number one electricity producer in Germany (as of 2020). As of 2017, a total of 6,669 photovoltaic installations, 110 wind turbines, 48 hydropower plants, 37 large biomass plants and 2 sewage/landfill gas plants were involved in domestic electricity generation in the Waldeck-Frankenberg district and were able to generate 51 percent of the total electricity demand from renewable sources.

The situation is different in the heating sector, where the share of renewable heat generation in the district was only around 15 percent in the last survey in 2013. Instead of fossil fuels such as heating oil, liquid gas and natural gas, established renewable solutions such as heat pumps (environmental heat), biomass heating (wood pellets, wood chips or solid fuels) and/or solar heating or domestic hot water generators should be increasingly used in the coming years. But also new technologies such as fuel cells and micro combined heat and power plants enable sustainable heat generation with simultaneous electricity production. The promotion through grants and/or low-interest loans for such regenerative heat generation systems has never been as attractive as it is at present (www.bafa.de o. www.kfw.de). However, one thing remains unchanged: The best energy is that which we do not consume in the first place!

The new climate savings book of the Waldeck-Frankenberg district deals with the topics of consumption and nutrition as well as energy saving, including many practical tips and information. It can be ordered free of charge at klimateam@lkwafkb.de.

Background/Tips

Did you know that every citizen in Germany consumes an average of around 18.5 kilograms of palm oil per capita per year and that this palm oil comes from huge plantations in Southeast Asia? Palm oil is found in particular in sweets, salty snacks, ready-made products, shower & care products and cleaning agents. In order to meet the growing global demand for this oil, valuable peat bog ecosystems and their forests have to be cleared or deforested. However, these forests and their peat bog ecosystems bind large amounts of CO2 and methane. Why don't you pay attention to the contents next time you shop and choose a more sustainable alternative (e.g. coconut oil)?

Another import hit with an extremely negative impact on the climate is beef and soybeans from faraway Brazil. In 2016, the world's largest cattle breeding recorded a stock of around 209 million animals, whose used-up pasture land - on an area almost as large as Germany - is used to grow soya. The 167 million hectares of grazing land for Brazilian cattle come largely from deforested or fire-cleared forests. These forests are no longer available as natural CO2 and methane sinks. You can help to counteract this by using regional meat products and reducing the current per capita meat consumption in our country from 1,100 g per week to the recommended amount (DGE) of 300-600 g per week.

Choose a balanced diet based on the 10 rules of the German Nutrition Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung e.V.):

• Enjoy food diversity,
• Vegetables and fruit - take "5 a day",
• Choose wholemeal,
• with animal foods complement the selection,
• use health-promoting fats,
• Save sugar and salt
• best to drink water,
• prepare gently,
• Eat and enjoy mindfully and
• watch your weight and keep moving.

Climate protection also begins at home - by switching to a green electricity provider, for example, up to 710 kg of CO2 can be saved per year. Or washing clothes at 30°C instead of 90°C - 1 kg of CO2 is saved per wash cycle. If the laundry is then dried in the air instead of in the dryer, this is a saving of a further 3.7 kg of CO2. By switching electricity tariffs, all citizens and entrepreneurs can make an additional contribution to renewable electricity generation.