In this episode of the Road the Green, Euronews reporter, Cyril Fourneris, travels to Graz, Austria and Berlin to see what everyday people are doing to help the environment.
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 [FRENCH]
00:17 Yes, it is up to you to change the world.
00:19 [SPANISH]
00:23 [FRENCH]
00:31 [MUSIC]
00:41 Dima is a European Climate Pact ambassador, activist and video maker.
00:46 He lives in Austria and travels a lot.
00:48 Every month he volunteers for biodiversity protection projects and posts videos on his YouTube channel.
00:55 I feel that many people maybe want to do something but they don't really know where to go
00:59 or don't know what they can do. So I kind of show them that there are like so many amazing people,
01:05 amazing projects all around the world.
01:07 He invited the Road to Green team to join him on a trip to Graz, Austria's second largest city,
01:13 where he wants to film some initiatives.
01:16 So we just arrived from the school where we joined Planet Matters.
01:20 They're just standing right behind me.
01:22 They're quite cool because they're super popular on TikTok.
01:27 Planet Matters, an environmental plastic cleanup movement, has more than 3 million followers on TikTok.
01:33 Its creator Felix is in Graz as part of an Austrian cleanup tour.
01:38 Today he's organized a challenge for school children.
01:42 The group that gets the most amount of trash into their bag after 25 minutes will get something.
01:49 And it's off to a flying start.
01:52 [Music]
02:10 Have you found some garbage? Can we see?
02:13 Wow, you will get first prize.
02:16 And the winner is this team.
02:20 These boys won some T-shirts.
02:22 And these girls too for finding the most original waste, which will end up on Felix's TikTok account.
02:27 We really try to use that for the younger audience to actually bring a positive environmental message across.
02:33 We always try to give the viewer a good feeling when they watch our videos
02:38 and make the viewer motivated to go out there themselves and take action.
02:43 We're out of the woods and back in the town, but it's not over yet.
02:48 Dima has heard about another initiative.
02:52 You're so professional. You really prepared them up.
02:57 This time a community center has invited local residents to a cleanup.
03:02 There's no challenge here. It's all about having a good time with your neighbors.
03:07 When we come by and people start talking to us, they say, "Oh, I do that too and I like what you're doing."
03:15 The locals invited us for tea, where Dima takes stock of the day.
03:20 When you go to some trips to catch some poachers or film some whales, it looks very appealing.
03:26 It seems like very epic and special.
03:29 But in fact, cleaning some streets or nature could be as equal as important
03:33 because everything is one ecosystem and we as humans are part of it.
03:37 I wish that such people would be the real rock stars of today.
03:41 There are millions of unsung heroes fighting for the environment.
03:45 The European Union is calling on them to come together through its annual #4OurPlanet campaign.
03:52 Events are taking place all over the world, from Morocco to Peru and Cambodia.
03:56 The idea is every good deed for the planet, no matter how small, counts.
04:02 That's also what another activist explained. She lives here in Berlin.
04:06 We have a meeting with Katarina, who promised to show us some nice citizen projects.
04:13 Hi, Geta.
04:15 Hi, welcome to Berlin. Nice to meet you.
04:18 Geta, you are an activist. You are an EU Climate Pact ambassador, right? What is it about?
04:24 Getting connected with other people from other European countries to make a change from the bottom
04:31 and to give some good advices for the politicians too.
04:36 I think we need to hurry a little bit if you see scientific facts.
04:40 You say that change can come from the bottom. Do you have concrete examples?
04:44 Yes, I do. Today we are going to Fritsche Straße.
04:47 They are coming together with all the people living there and making a difference in their street.
04:52 Greening the street. Greening the street. Let's go.
04:55 Fritsche Straße is the name of this street.
04:58 And the 100 or so residents living here are convinced that more biodiversity and natural beauty would be good for everyone.
05:05 They've created green spaces and installed a rainwater collection system.
05:09 This is the first water barrel on a sidewalk in Berlin.
05:13 And actually for flowers and trees rainwater is much better than groundwater.
05:20 These are Benyus hatches. They are very good for little insects.
05:28 And this is just a wonderful home for them.
05:35 This is a new home for our bees and we call it Air Bee and Bee.
05:40 It's a bee hotel. Five stars. Yes, five stars at least.
05:45 Wild bees in the city are very important because they have the flowers to reproduce and it works.
05:52 Once you have more plants and especially you have the natural plants that just grow,
06:01 the birds start coming because the bugs start coming and then the birds start coming.
06:05 And so you have a little bit of wildlife.
06:07 It's greener and peaceful and people are getting together.
06:11 And it reminds us what we need in life.
06:17 Greening our cities is a priority. So is restoring natural ecosystems.
06:22 Katharina wants to show a toad fence in Grunewald forest, one of Berlin's biodiversity hotspots.
06:31 We are going to rescue some toads and some frogs because it's mating time and they're coming from the woods
06:36 and they want to go to the water and we don't want them to get run over.
06:41 Welcome to paradise. Toad paradise. To be clear.
06:51 (Music)
07:01 Every day around 50 volunteers and school children take an intern to collect toads from behind the fence.
07:07 Last year the association saved 2,500 of them, helping the forest ecosystem thrive.
07:14 If you have six cars during an hour, you will extinguish 30% of the toad population.
07:21 If you have like 30 cars, you hit them all.
07:24 Amphibs is food for many animals and in order to have a big variety of species,
07:30 we need to have high numbers of specimens and so we are proving the number of specimens,
07:36 frankly, with all the volunteers.
07:41 The amphibians have arrived safely. We continue our journey.
07:44 See you soon on the road to a greener world.
07:48 (Music)