Materials
What do you really need?
Educational youth events often involve a lot of materials: dozens of flipcharts, sticky notes, pens, markers… Can you imagine an eco-friendlier use of materials?
Watch our short video and get started!
Test your knowledge
Best practices
Check out some of our best practices – and find even more in our free to download handbook!
Refuse, reduce, reuse
Focus on your needs, not your wants. Say often no to products and services. Do it differently and try out new ways.
Have zero-waste as an ideal:
Count the waste you produce and try to make less. Reuse your flip chart sheets (store them), rinse your coffee cups. Ask everybody to bring their own materials.
Be smart, get quality
Know and benefit from suppliers of eco-friendly materials. Don’t go for cheap stuff that soon will fill the landfills. Think ahead.
Check the storage and the second-hand
Do you have unused materials from former projects? Can you get it second-hand? Not always you have to buy new.
Buying in!
Buy local, fair, biological and. Make sure those products are as eco-friendly or as harmless as possible.
Be creative
Put edible flowers in the drinking water? Making confetti from leaves? Improvise, repurpose and continuously learn, trying out things for you and your organisation.
Give gifts that have impact
Organise a plant- or a clothes-swap. Teach each other a skill to take home. We do not always have to buy a gift to appreciate one another.
Step out of the rush
Observe the changing landscape, reflect, listen to a podcast or music, read a good book or prepare for the learning encounter ahead. Travel ‘slow’.
Hop on!
Participants from the same country or region could hop on the same bus or train, or organise a car-sharing.
Enjoy
the differences in landscape and culture more through slow travel.
Time for
Finally reading that book!
The bonus
Travel time can be used to get to know each other, and participants can report about their travels on social media. Perhaps they could even do fun tasks together!
Regional partnerships
Why not make a regional project and explore diversity in your surroundings?
Nearby partners
Collaboration with nearby partner countries improves the chance that participants will choose green means of travel to reach the activity venue.
Taking distance into account
When planning a new project can help to avoid long travel for participants in the first place.
What is a green travel policy?
A travel policy that sets standards for green travelling. A great way to reduce your travel emissions on the organisational level.
Ideas for your own travel policy?
Till 600 kilometres distance use grounded transportation (such as buses, ships, shared taxis, shuttles or similar).
The bonus
Travel time can be used to get to know each other, and participants can report about their travels on social media. Perhaps they could even do fun tasks together!
Travel time = Working time.
Consider (a part of ) the time travelled as working time. Discuss which task to complete during the travel.
Hop on!
Participants from the same country or region could hop on the same bus or train, or organise a car-sharing.
Enjoy
the differences in landscape and culture more through slow travel.
Time for
Finally reading that book!
"When cleaning I use original stuff like vinegar, soda and green soap, as least mixed stuff as possible We don’t throw away any food; try to bike and use the train a lot. I seek eco-friendly advice, read about sustainability, invest time talking to advisers, technicians."
Material self assessment
Need food for thought, material for discussion or concrete steps for action?
Do your self assessment and see where you are now, what you are good at and where there is space to improve.
Create your bucket list
So, what is next for you? Take a look at the list below and pick what you will do next.
Feel free to prioritize your top five actions for your upcoming projects.
Useful links
Practical tools
- Decluttering in practice? Allow yourself to do with less. Getting rid of unnecessary stuff step by step with Marie Kondo.
- Find and learn about European Eco Labels.
- And which ones would be ‘best’?
- Eco Font for printing
Useful search engines
Reusable material for workshops
- Inspiration on sustainable post-its, refillable markers in the office here and here.
- Reusable notebook: use it up to 500 times by Moyu. (interface is in Dutch)
- Coffee/tea: you can buy sustainable coffee and tea at home and in the office.
Further reading
- How Bad are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything, Mike Berners-Lee,
- Materials and the Environment: Eco-informed Material Choice, Michael F. Ashby.
Download the ECOrasmus handbook
Find many more tips, best practice examples and tools in our handbook! Download it now for free:
The webpage was prepared with the financial support of the European Union. It reflects the views only of the authors, and the Programme cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.