Rethink environmental education

Metro calls for public comment.

Very recently our NGOs (Renewable Energy Centre and Transition Network) and others were asked by the municipality for input and comments for the review of its old environment education (EE) policy.

In our view, it does not make much sense if only this piece of legislation related to sustainable development is tackled on its own.

This is why we sent the following response to the municipality:

1. Can you tell us if evaluations of activities proposed in the 2007 document have been made?

This would help us to figure out what has been working or not working and therefore where we should go from now on to avoid reinventing the wheel;

2. Does NMBM has a larger policy on “sustainable development”, where it is defined and where in this one should fit?

In our view, EE should be considered as only a piece of a large sustainability issue. Our questions in relation to this are: ý Does it make sense to organise EE at schools that mobilises people to recycle and stop damaging the environment through pollution while NMBM allows incredible pollution of our rivers and estuaries; the parks department (or whatever entity) refuse to put recycling bins all around, educate people and organise a home sorting, recycling, reuse system and refuse to bring to book large retailers which continue distributing unrecyclable packaging and snubbing GMO labelling?

ý Does it make sense to do EE while NMBM’s indirect message is “if you drop waste on the ground, you create employment”.