September 2018 As waste is one of our current topics of sustainability education, the children decided to go visit the former landfill-turned-educational facility „Energieberg“ in Georgswerder. It was quite a trek to get there, as we had to walk quite a ways from Veddel and then up a big, steep hill until we got to the top but had a spectacular panoramic view of the city of Hamburg. Once up top, we had a little picnic before starting our walk on top of what the kids couldn’t believe used to be a big pile of garbage. We were greeted by really tall wind turbines that the children learned create energy through wind power, and we could all agree that they must make a lot of it because it was very windy up there! We also saw sheep grazing on the grass that they covered the hill with, which also demonstrated the reusability of the space, not only for wind energy but also for reducing animal waste in other places and efficiently using the space for more than just one function.
We were already quite tired on our way back down so we were happy to sit for a bit in the information centre at the bottom and watch a short film about the landfill and what it represented, and through a dragon metaphor (who lives underneath the „Energieberg“), understood that to help the environment, we should do our best to reduce the waste we produce, reuse what we can and recycle the rest.
On our way back to the train station, we stopped to look at the big power lines going over our heads, and we talked about how the electricity generated by the turbines was now being transferred through the lines and into plugs and sockets in our homes and the kindergarten.
It was a long trek but it was well worth it on a beautiful autumn day!
– Wendy