Sustainable development on different levels is a primary goal of making the world greener. Although it has already been achieved on different levels and in diverse areas and many examples of good practice do - at least theoretically exist - there seem to be numerous further possibilities to create awareness and solutions to achieve a greener sourrounding. In our project titled "A Project on Sustainablility: Think global, act local!" we intend to deal with the chances, positive long-term effects and the practicability of sustainable development on a global level (concepts, ideas, legal frameworks) and on a local level (green actions in your local area). To gradually get closer to our aim of green schools we want to work on the topic of sustainability by both theoretical and practical approaches. To make the students of our project truly act local in ecologically friendly terms we want to reach our project goals by interdisciplinary approches and by motivating the students through theme-based materials. Through cross-curricular teaching we mean to work on the following project goals. Firstly, students are to be sensitized for the necessity of sustainable development by expressing their future concerns about our environment (without any consistent change) by means of artistic methods. The projects starts off with an art exhibition called "Our Planet in 2050". There a some sinister and threatening scenarios to be expected, as - if nothing is really done about the problem politically, socially and economy - the environmental perspective for future generations will be hopeless. Consequently, the necessity of urgent ecological initiative becomes obvious. This is why we are dealing with concrete possibilities to improve our environment in ecological terms. We are going to do special scientific experiments such as the power-to-gas method powered by solar energy and the building of a solar driven dual-axis tracker driven by Arduino. These experiments are to show, how effective the use of renewables really is. Additionally, students will deal with solutions to the problem of pollution from the political, social and economic perspective. This is why there are diverse activities such as the young journalist project, creating surveys and statistics, interviewing experts and so on. The highlight of these socio-political approaches trying to find economic and political responses and solutions to the problem will be a common simulation of an eco-conference performed at one of our schools. Students are expected to realize that there are already sufficient theoretical concepts and expertise at hand to sustain green development, however, there is still a lack of a common strong and assertive strategy to save our environment by putting into effect binding laws on a national and European basis. To guarantee the students profound expertise and chances of practical adaptability we are going to do numerous excursions to regional scientific institutions, universities and companies. This gives students the chance to get aware of regional possibilities and ways of sustainable development (solar technology, energy storaging, thermal systems, pump and heating systems, e-cars, biodiversity, energy plants, renewable energies like wind, water and solar energy). They are enabled to widen their green horizons. They are achieving growing awareness of the fact that unscrupulous consumptive behaviour and lifestyles and ecological inconsiderateness of modern industrialized nations seem to be limitless. In contrast to that nature definitely has its limits! Finally, there are given the chance of expressing their more optimostic and action-based attitudes in a second art exhibition at the end of the project titled "Let's save our planet!" and to sum up all their activities and products and results in a common Green Magazine conceived by themselves with the title "European Schools Go Green: Nature Knows no limits. Time to act!"
In our project named „A project on sustainability: think global, act local!“ students of all three partner schools dealt with chances and positve long-term effects of sustainable development. The practicability of sustainable and environmentally friendly measures as regards teh increase in production of renewable energies was significant in our project. In order to reach our goal to realize more sustainablility at European schools, we handled the topic on the theoretical and practical level. We chose the interdisciplinary approach to reach our goal successfully on the transnational way which was a challenge as the topic is rather complex. As an utmost priority to make the necessity of the increase in production of renewables visible we started the interdisciplinary approach by exchanging subject content, methods and materials according to the following project structure. First of all we developed students‘ awareness for the necessity of the production of alternative and renewable energies by making them project worst case scenerios and express these scenarios in an artistic manner. For this purpose the Greek and German school performed two complex art exhibitons inviting parents and staff. This exhibition served the idea of making a drastic step into the realization of environmentally friendly production necessary. These exhibitions lead us to our next step which was to develop scienticfic concepts making the prodction and use of renewable energies a realistic global way to support environment. Consequently, the Italian and German school developed solar-driven modules and vehicles and ways to develop biodegradable plastic and ways to recycle rubbish effectively.