Purchasing decisions change the world!

Yesterday our project day took place in class 5b on the topic “Our purchasing decisions change the world”.

We visited the grocery store “Der Sache wegen” in Prenzlauer Berg and got many interesting tips on how to be environmentally friendly in everyday life. This grocery store only sells products which are organic, fair trade, without animal suffering, without palm oil, without plastic packaging and regional. We as consumers determine the course and if we make our daily shopping as valuable and sustainable as possible and if more and more people in more and more countries do so, this will not remain hidden from the food companies. Demand determines supply!

Afterwards we went to school and recycled old t-shirts that should be thrown away and sewed reusable shopping bags out of them. In earlier times clothes and articles of daily use were repaired much more often, in today’s disposable society we all tend to simply buy new ones. In German wardrobes alone, there are over 5 billion items of clothing hanging in the wardrobes, which makes about 95 items of clothing per person. Every fifth piece of clothing we hardly ever wear. The prices for clothes are low and buying new is often more comfortable and cheaper than repairing or mending. But the price for the environment is high, because this means more and more CO2 emissions, microplastics made of different synthetic materials in the ground water and the sea, immense water consumption and toxic chemicals that get into lakes, rivers or the sea via waste water or even directly.

During this project day it was important for us to sensitize the children, to think carefully about every purchase decision and to ask ourselves what is really needed. It was a super cool day, because the students also learned how to sew and some of them still use these “upcycled” bags!