There is no way around this evening to see the parallels between climate protection and a vegetable patch. Both are human interventions in nature. Both must be nurtured and cared for, sensitively, not with brute force and impatience, but carefully and with consideration for the environment. If you always attend to them with the right handling, you will not only harvest once in the end, but can see many new seedlings sprout in the next generation. “Why another prize for climate protection?” asked Dorothee von Bary, board member of the community foundation in the district of Fürstenfeldbruck, rhetorically once during the award ceremony. “It is not intended as a flash in the pan, but rather to help the award winners to grow.”
The community foundation will award its climate and environmental protection prize for the first time on Thursday evening. The host is the Sparkasse Fürstenfeldbruck, which is sponsoring the prize worth 1,000 euros. She has invited to the event in the hall of the Sparkasse building on Hauptstrasse, her “living room”, as the Chairman of the Sparkasse, Peter Harwalik, calls it in his opening address. A modest description for the octagonal hall, which offers the event a brilliant stage thanks to its high ceiling with the uniform lighting system, the velvet armchairs and the wood-panelled podium.
Like the community foundation, the savings bank is also committed to the common good, Harwalik explains the cooperation and then welcomes the many guests from politics. Among others, Brucker City Councilor Christian Götz is in the audience, as well as Puchheim’s Mayor Norbert Seidl and Katrin Staffler, member of the Bundestag who lives in the district.
“It is not intended as a flash in the pan, but is intended to help the award winners to grow,” says Dorothee von Bary, chairwoman of the community foundation, the main idea in her welcome.
(Photo: Christian Hufnagel/oh)
Dorothee von Bary, who then speaks, is grateful that this formality was taken care of for her. She underscores the importance of the prize, which is intended to stand for a positive approach to climate protection. “Many small people,” she quotes, “doing many small things in many small places can change the face of the world.” Christian Hufnagel, Editor-in-Chief Süddeutsche Zeitung Fürstenfeldbruck, who acts as media partner of the prize, completes the welcome. He represents the SZ author and co-juror of the award, Ingrid Hügenell, who is unable to attend due to illness.
Projects that cannot be funded receive special prizes
The selection of the winners was noticeably difficult. On the one hand because of the sheer number of impressive applications, according to the jury, on the other hand because some of them cannot be honored with prize money for legal reasons alone. In order to honor them nonetheless, the foundation awards at least one special prize to two of them.
The first goes to “the used house” of the Lambertz family. Lambertz made a very conscious decision 15 years ago to keep their “old stock for demolition” that they had just acquired. Unlike so many small family homes from the 1950s, the house was not intended to give way to a swanky new build that produces rubble, gobbles up additional materials, and strangles the surrounding ecosystem. They have had it extensively renovated in an environmentally and climate-friendly manner, even gaining added value from the few necessary interventions in the surrounding nature. Two spruce trees that had to be felled became boards for furniture production. Jury member Katrin Rizzi, who is also the managing director of the community foundation, presents the first of the trophies of the evening. The winners do not receive a golden paperweight, but, in the spirit of the honour, a sunflower.
Peter Kiefer and Rainer Widmann accept the flower for the second special prize on behalf of the Kolping Africa team. For forty years the Kolping Family has been supporting the rainforest protection organization of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which goes back to the commitment of the former Olching chaplain, Pastor Josef Aicher. In 2007, he learned that the rainforest in his parish in Congo, where he was serving as a missionary, was about to be cut down. To prevent this, he used his contacts to dignitaries in the church and officials in politics. Together with the inhabitants of the forest, a network was created that combines nature conservation and social projects. An “enormously important contribution” emphasizes laudator Dorothee von Bary.
The wild bee garden is one of four projects from Puchheim that have been considered together with the environmental award.
(Photo: Voxbrunner Carmen)
“It really has to be a green Puchheim,” sums up Christian Hufnagel in the laudatory speech for the first prize. Puchheim’s “Urban Nature Package” contains four projects: a wild bee garden, an urban nature trail, a permaculture garden of the adult education center and the city beds. The municipality started the latter in 2016. Distributed throughout the city, the environmental agency makes small areas available to residents for communal planting and harvesting. A modern, low-threshold climate protection concept, explains Mayor Seidl, who accepts the price flower together with VHS manager Achim Puhl. “A ‘bang’ won’t save us, we have to work our way up bit by bit.”
Children are the climate protectors of tomorrow
“A perfect example of circular economy”: Larissa Holmer receives the environmental award for her circular shed in Gröbenzell.
(Photo: Carmen Voxbrunner)
Dirk Hoogen knows all about communication, the juror is responsible for it full-time for the Sparkasse. He therefore emphasizes the value of the “circulation shed” for the exchange of users before he presents the sunflower to the initiator Larissa Holmer. The “shed” is actually a container that stands in front of the colorful halls of the Gröbenzell concrete plant. Here people can hand in items they no longer need and take other handed in items with them. “A perfect example of circular economy,” enthuses Hoogen.
The Turmgeflüster association (in the picture Christine Dietzinger (left) and Zoe Braun) teach children a sustainable way of life, according to the laudatory speech.
(Photo: Carmen Voxbrunner)
“Eatable City”: The work of the youth group of the Federal Nature Conservation in Gröbenzell with Manuela Zapf is also commendable.
(Photo: Carmen Voxbrunner)
The last two prizes go to two youth projects. Karin Dixius, laudator for the Turmgeflüster association, takes up the quote from the previous speaker, Dorothee von Bary, about small people who do small things. This is to be understood literally, because Turmgeflüster brings children closer to a sustainable way of life, in workshops, through campaigns and educational trips. A special merit, because children are our future, “we have to reach them first.” In this sense, Alina Reize also distinguishes the youth organization of the Federal Nature Conservation in Gröbenzell. Among other things, she accompanies groups of children in the sustainable management of a plant garden in the municipality of Gröbenzell as part of the “edible city” project.
After the award ceremony, the award winners, laudators, organizers and officials frolic in the cafeteria in front of the Sparkasse hall, where notices present the projects again.
(Photo: Carmen Voxbrunner/Carmen Voxbrunner)
After the award ceremony, the award winners, laudators, organizers and officials frolic in the cafeteria in front of the Sparkasse hall, where notices present the projects again. With mineral water and orange juice, people talk about the successful projects – and those that are still to succeed.
“We want to use the prize money to finance future campaigns,” says Mona Krippgans from Turmgeflüster. Workshops on the subject of “Earth” are being planned, and in November a trip to the “Climate House” in Bremerhaven will be organized for the children. Larissa Holmer wants to use the money to equip her circulation shed with climate-friendly heating, which is necessary when it gets wetter in winter. “We also thought about pimping it with a green roof.” The first offspring of the Environment and Climate Prize 2022 are already sticking out of the ground.