Climate protection in school shopping - brochure and folder reissued
The Clever Shopping for School initiative offers the opportunity to quickly find environmentally friendly products. This gives everyone the opportunity to pay attention to climate protection when shopping at school. The best thing is to do it right away with your next purchase!
There is often a lack of awareness between the item on the shelf and its impact on the environment, health and climate. Yet it is so simple! The notebooks come from the forest, or more precisely, the wood that is used to make the paper. Recycled paper notebooks, on the other hand, use the waste paper we all collect and can be used again and again. Plastic school supplies, on the other hand, rarely have a second life. They are made of too many different materials to be recycled in a meaningful way so far. This means that valuable materials are lost. For pens that are neither refillable nor refilled, the end is reached even faster and they become waste that is incinerated. Looked at another way, it is also about the product-to-packaging ratio. For example, with a glue stick it pays to make sure that the glue itself makes up at least as much of the product as the packaging, i.e. the plastic around it. In general, it can be said that small packaged portions are always more expensive.
Children's wishes are not always compatible with environmental and health considerations. They usually have very specific preferences when it comes to motifs, and these are often printed on plastic. The most difficult thing is to discuss with children in the shop why, for example, PVC erasers in the shape of fruit are not a good idea or why this time it should be a cardboard folder instead of the plastic folder with a motif. This can be better discussed at home in peace. But the teachers are also in demand, because they also have wishes for the parents about what to get before the start of school. School administrators and parents' associations can also contribute a lot to making school shopping climate-friendly.
Environmentally friendly and low in pollutants
State Ecolabels are a great help here. School articles and products for children with the Austrian Ecolabel are particularly suitable. It is especially important for materials that come into direct contact with children's skin to be low in harmful substances. This is because harmful substances are easily absorbed through the skin. With the Austrian Ecolabel, parents are on the safe side of having chosen environmentally friendly and chemically harmless products.
"With its successful 'Clever einkaufen für die Schule' initiative, the Ecolabel, as a guarantor of high quality and practised sustainability, makes an important contribution to safe school supplies that are also particularly environmentally friendly. Everyone benefits from this - the parents, the children and our climate," says Climate Protection Minister Leonore Gewessler.
The Clever Shopping for School initiative offers guidance for school shopping. It draws attention to high-quality and, above all, environmentally friendly school articles at www.schuleinkauf.at and offers parents the opportunity to find out about sustainable products before they go shopping. As a service, a directory with about 5000 recommended articles is available, which can be searched online at the push of a button and are available in specialised paper shops. The newly published mini guidbook and the school-folder provide information and are ideal for passing on.
From 1 June to 30 September, the campaign UmweltTipp! takes place. In this campaign, partner companies in the retail sector draw special attention to the articles recommended by the initiative.
Clever shopping for the school. And the environment is happy! is an initiative of the Ministry for Climate Protection (BMK) in cooperation with the Austrian paper trade (WKO).
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