The Hungarian Citizen Thinking Lab within the EU 1.5° Lifestyles project was successfully organised by GreenDependent on 8 October 2022 in Budapest.
There was a great atmoshpere, exciting conversations and full attendance! The GreenDependent team is grateful to and proud of the participants who actively contributed with their time, energy and valuable inputs.
The Climate Puzzle (prepared to fit the Hungarian circumstances) was a popular tool and the participants could take away many useful thoughts and practices through the game & discussion afterwards.
The goal of the game is to find ways to reduce our personal carbon footprint to 2.5 tons/year until 2030 (and then to 0.7 t CO2e/cap/yr until 2050)[1], which is the key to fit the Paris Climate Agreement. Players can choose options from 63 choices during the game. All of the options are evidence-based and measurable possibilities to decrease our carbon footprint in the area of housing, mobility, nutrition and leisure. The size of the cards indicates the impact of the option. The carbon footprints of the participants were calculated beforehand by our Dutch partner organization in the project, so everyone could play the puzzle based on her/his personal carbon footprint.
During the game, participants marked some hot topics; options that are relevant, but they don’t want to choose them for their own lifestyles for some reasons. These options became the topics for the afternoon discussion sessions, such as vegan and vegetarian nutrition, car- and flat sharing, heating with biomass, etc.
In line with the topic of the Lab as well as the green event organisation approach of the local partner, GreenDependent Institute, the carbon footprint of the event was also calculated and compensated by planting indigenous fruit trees in Hungary. The participants had the opportunity to take and plant a tree at home.
Budapest and the lovely (& sustainable) catering team treated us well, so all we have now ahead of us is to process all the information we received from the workshop.
Check out the video about the workshop HERE!
Edina Mihály, GreenDependent Institute
[1] Source: UNEP Emissions Gap Report, 2020