subscribe: Posts | Comments

You are currently viewing: Sustainability Resources and ‘Hacks’

Sustainability Resources and ‘Hacks’

 

Building a Base:

Resources and ‘Hacks’

Preamble.

The idea for this came from you, actually… from your ‘Can the Planet Afford Me‘ assignments.  You cited so many interesting sources of inspiration and practical support to moving us all along the A–> I –> D–> A–> continuum towards ACTION that I thought it might be good to produce an updateable listing of these things [in English] which can be offered to successive cohorts (promotions) of students across the English and Sustainability classes I teach and perhaps further afield.  The term ‘resources’ is pretty obvious: anything that can help; but what are ‘hacks‘?  Well, I suppose one could call them ‘really clever / really ‘neat’ ideas / solutions’.

Try searching online for things like:

and you will see what I mean and appreciate just how inventive and creative people can be if they put their minds to it! More often than not the ‘hacks’ are gloriously simple and quick to achieve. I’ve tried a few myself – though I haven’t always been successful with some of the gardening ones, but that is more likely to be a function of my ineptitude rather than the ‘hack’!

In a similar vein you can search around the terms ‘sustainability’… ‘recycling’ … ‘repurposing’ … ‘zero waste’  etc etc etc and ‘hacks’ … but I am sure that all of you will have some ‘hacks’ of your own to share too!

Your Task.

To develop a resource bank of sustainability resources and ‘hacks’ IN ENGLISH that we can update and which can be shared with other student groups present and future (and staff) at UHA (and beyond)..

It is up to you how you go about doing this, but some things to consider may well be:

  1. In what format is this best produced?
  2. How and by whom could it be maintained this year and thereafter?
  3. How will you contribute your own ideas and link to the ideas of others?
  4. What structure should the resource have (are we talking one gigantic scrolling page… a blog … a website … a GoogleDrive … a Facebook site … a combination)?

NBs.

A. Don’t just think about links to ‘hacks’ online – that’s vital, yes, but I would like you to actually TRY some yourself, write a short account of your experience and perhaps even bring some of the resulting ‘fruits of your labours‘ to class and showcase / explain them in English, of course!  Rating them might be a good idea too, perhaps in terms of cost, time and performance/value.

B. There are resources other than hacks…

So, I would like to see this running behind the scenes of our course and for the resource bank to be presented in class with some animation (‘hacks’ shown in class … or maybe you made a short video of them as you did them)… I would like to see how you are getting on with it / progress made in our last session together which is  13th March 2023).  Ideally, I would like each individual to present a review in English of one ‘hack’ that they have actually tried themselves and the result.  Each member of the class should come to our last session with their ‘hack’ ready to present and explain it where it is physically possible.  If it is not possible to bring the ‘hack’ itself into class, you should at least be able to show/explain it to us in good English and how and why you intend to use it.