To Learn Practically Environment & Bio Resources Management

I have little experience in being part of environment projects. First, I helped at an recycling project in Costa Rica which had the main intent of making local people aware of what happens if they for example burn their bottles and that they should better recycle them. I helped to tell the people how to separate their trash and where to put it so we could make sure the right material gets together.

My second project was in Austria which was alot more work. We (a team of 7 people) created a folder about climate – injustice with about 120 pages. The folder contains different methods with the aim to bring youngsters closer to the complex of problems of the world climate.

Children in Austria and Germany know alot about the environment, global warming and climate change, because since some time they get teached about it in school and at home. But I do not think that they are really succesfull in realizing what they learned. They have to understand that the environment is something important for themselves and why – then they can start acting like it. It is already alot what is done in Germany to make kids aware of this topic, but there could still be alot more done I think – especially by acting more and not just studying.

I care about the environment by caring about little things in daily life, but also trying to build my future in this direction: I am studying Environment and Bio Resource Management to be able to work in this field.

In daily life, I take care that I buy regional products in order to have less carbon emissions (because the imported products have higher carbon footprint), buy food which is traded fair (for example the FAIR TRADE sing), because it assures that people get enough money for their work.

I try not to let water run if I don’t need it, to not take the car if I can walk, take public transport or go by bicycle, take my charger off the plug-in if I don’t need it anymore. Moreover I do not take the plane if the distance is not really far (like Indonesia for example) – I prefer going 10 hours by train! I do that pretty often, because I study in Austria but I am originally from Germany. I think everybody can and should do some little things in his daily life – if everybody does little we can do something big – all together!

I wish I can gain more experience in running environment projects, especially gain a new perspective than the one I get from university. I hope that I can learn new information, new ways of seeing things and new working styles from Tunas Hijau, but I hope they also can learn some things from me and my knowledge. Moreover I want help to connect and thus also understand the culture of Indonesia but also the Indonesian people the culture of Germany – because only like this it is possible to understand more pieces of the puzzle which is called world – and then be able to change something globally.

As I already said in a short sentence above, I study Environment and Bio Resource Management in Vienna, Austria. So all my background knowledge I have, I got from there (or can get from there ;). I know about this theme in each way, ethical, political, law, but also biological part of rivers or the chemical part of the air. The problem is, that I always get an theoretical overview, but not a quite specific one, nor in taking actions.

So I really hope I can gain some experience in that here in Indonesia. I am originally from Frankfurt, Germany – but I study in Austria. Frankfurt is actually a really small city – but everybody knows it. Especially compared to Surabaya, it is nothing! We only have 800.000 habitants – but therefore it is an really important area. It is famous for its banks and finance – especially the stock market – and its airport.

Our airport is one of the main important for international flights and the most important airport for wares in Europe. There is a river – called Main – which crosses my city. It was so dirty the last 40 years, that it did not even freeze in winter, but now again they even opened it for swimming at some places, which means that it is alot cleaner now.

In Frankfurt we have an environment zone, which means that no cars can enter the city center if they did not pass a special test – in order to keep the air cleaner. More and more people start to buy regional and bio products, so the offering of those products and markets keeps growing.

Compared to Austria though, you can feel that Frankfurt is more industrialized. In Austria there are alot of mountains and farms – so people are still more connected to the nature then coming directly from the city and not having the opportunity to really have their own part of nature.