22.08.2023 Christin Müller 9945

pme donates: Climate protection Göttingen

Rainer-W. Hoffmann is a climate activist. In 2006, the 83-year-old founded the environmental association "Klimaschutz Göttingen". In recent years, the small organization has made its voice heard in public on the subject of environmental protection through clever and forward-looking projects. The pme Familienservice has now donated 5,000 euros to the Lower Saxony-based association, which it has investedin its latest innovative future project "Green Classroom" , a Kyrgyz yurt as a sustainable classroom.

Klimaschutz Göttingen e.V. has been campaigning for environmental protection in the region for many years. What was your intention behind founding the association back then?

Rainer Hoffmann: As a professor of social sciences for many years, I also had to deal with environmental issues. This made it easier for me to recognize the emerging climate change. When I retired, I wanted to focus more on climate issues, so my fellow campaigners and I founded Climate Protection Göttingen.  

More and more young people are taking a public stand for environmental protection in times of an escalating climate crisis. How do you observe these developments?

We have actively supported this movement from the very beginning. On the one hand, we went along to the events organized by the Fridays for Future activists, contributed a speech or two and, conversely, invited them to participate in our events - for example as part of the Göttingen Climate Protection Days.

At some point, the movement had grown so large that it no longer needed the support of our - relatively small - association. From there, there is a very wide arc to the current developments with the "Last Generation" and "Ende Gelände" and similar groups. We are horrified to see the discrimination and false accusations being made in public.

Which projects have you successfully realized in recent decades?

For example, there was the so-called ice block challenge, a public event that focused on the topic of thermal insulation. We set up two small huts in the middle of the city and filled each of them with a large block of ice, each containing one cubic meter of ice. One hut was not insulated at all, the other was insulated to a high professional standard. In a competition, people were asked to guess how much of the ice would still be left in the two huts after a few months.

We attach great importance to addressing normal consumers with our campaigns. At technically demanding events, lecture series and the like, you usually always reach the same people. The general public, which is ultimately what matters, is often simply not addressed. A very large number of people - several hundred - took part in the ice block bet. It was a very successful project that was subsequently exported to two other cities and did the same educational work there.

Your environmental education approach was considered innovative many years ago. Can you tell us more about it?

Yes, our environmental education approach can be broken down into four aspects:

Target audience: Our campaigns are always aimed at ordinary consumers and not just the traditional academic audience that reads scientific journals and attends relevant congresses.

Method: If you want to reach normal consumers, you have to go other ways and offer something to look at, marvel at and try out.

Locations: We don't use university rooms or galleries for our campaigns, but everyday places where the general public meets anyway, such as open-air swimming pools, community festivals and neighborhood festivals.

Modern media: Social media also help to gain access to a large public.

You have received a donation of 5,000 euros from pme Familienservice . How are you using the donation?

We are using the donation from pme Familienservice for a great project that began under the title "Green Classroom" . We have set up an original Kyrgyz yurt on the grounds of a large school. A new classroom can be set up in this yurt, which is more comfortable than the concrete boxes from the 1970s. It is a 100% ecologically sound structure made only of felt, leather and wood. If such a yurt were left in the wild, it would disintegrate without residue due to natural processes.

The Kyrgyz yurt as a sustainable classroom.

We built a bio-piler for this purpose. This is a huge compost heater with a diameter of 6 to 7 meters wide and 2 to 3 meters high. The bio-piler contains pure wood waste that is produced everywhere, such as waste wood or tree cuttings. Microbiological decomposition processes create temperatures of 60 to 70 degrees Celsius in a bio-piler. This allows the yurt to be heated. It will soon be fitted with a well-insulated substructure with normal underfloor heating. If everything goes well, the yurt can be used from the fall.

The bio boiler is an ecological heating system.

With the donation from pme Familienservice, we were also able to supplement the project with solar energy. It is now a small, self-sufficient ecological unit called "oecOase".
The beneficiaries of this project are children and young people from a production school in Göttingen who are at high risk of entering adult life without any educational qualifications. The aim of the training is to obtain a secondary school leaving certificate. The young people also receive basic training in woodwork, metalwork and home economics. In addition, a new school garden is currently being set up, which includes our oecOase.

We hope that this project will teach students that such a circular economy model works and that they will acquire technical skills that will help them to find employment in modern craft businesses, for example.

How can we get more people involved in environmental protection?

I think that the interdisciplinary approach I have already outlined is the most successful way to get people interested in environmental protection, or at least to open their minds. The earlier you can get people interested in the topic, the better. Above all, you can achieve a lot through children by providing them with educational support from an early age.

To this end, we have already implemented various projects, such as the "Open Expo". We wanted children and young people to present their views on their own climate future and worked together with various schools to achieve this. In total, we received well over 200 pictures from children and young people of all ages, in which they put their fears, but also their hopes and other creative ideas on paper. We then exhibited the pictures in places where people go anyway, such as town halls, administrative buildings, the local court or other schools. This series of events has been very well received and was even transferred to Göttingen's twin city Toruń in Poland last year and is set to go to France in 2024 to stimulate a comparative competition there.

Social commitment of the pme Familienservice

Whether in refugee aid, projects for children or the homeless - many team members at pme Familienservice volunteer in their free time. The pme Familienservice also supports social projects in Germany and around the world. In 2022, the company donated a total of 100,000 euros to eight charitable organizations that work on a daily basis for disadvantaged people, children and young people or climate issues, among others. All 2000 team members had the opportunity to submit suggestions for social projects that they thought were particularly worthy of support. The associations with the most votes received a donation to enable them to implement their projects.