Students:Group Two: Martin, Petr, Aggie

After having breakfast we went to Riegersburg castle. There, on the top of the hill, Mario Diethart and Marlene Mader introduced the region of the Styrian Vulkanland to us. The way in which local people started to involve the whole community in local politics was more than inspiring. Their approach was based on many small projects which had an influence on the entire community. In effect, the people of the Vulkanland started to be proud of their region again, which is not the richest or the most industrial, but it's sustainable and independent because of many local producers with original products. We missed hearing someone local who could have enriched the presentation with their personal experiences. There are similar projects in the Czech Republic; for example 'Tradice Bílých Karpat' in the Carpathian Mountains which works on a smaller scale. It could perhaps attract more local people.

Instead of having lunch we visited the Zotter chocolate manufactory where the local 'Willy Wonka', alias Josef Zotter, produces many kinds of 100% Fair Trade and organic chocolate. The manufactury is unique in it's approach to the self-sufficency of production and in it's provocative promotions. They also place an emphasis on the well-being of their employees as well as their cocoa suppliers. They also provoke people with their "Edible ZOO" next to the factory where visitors can watch farm animals and afterwards eat local meat at a restaurant in the middle of the field.

The only thing to criticize was our surprisingly unsustainable violent gluttony during the free chocolate tasting.

The last visit was to Ecoregion Kaindorf, where Joachim Ninaus presented the success stories of their work and the local sustainability efforts. They for example managed to replace plastic bags with paper bags in all shops. They built a charging station for electro scooters and new cycle ways made of "no-oil asphalt" (using tree sap as the substitute additive). The use of mainstream advertising of products and projects is an unusual method that could be put into practice in CZ where similar projects don't have very attractive or cool advertising. They might focus more on common people and youth without fear of using commercial ways of promotion.

There's one fact that we found surprising. Austrians are very proud of using photovoltaic energy. There's nothing bad in it unless you talk about the bad impact on the Third World of conventional power plants and you use photovoltaic power plants as a solution like in Kaindorf. As photovoltaic is a quite controversial source of energy because of using precious or dangerous components acquired in the Third world and because of their complicated recycling.