Angelika Ambrus: a young advocate for environmental protection
Passion for Environmental Protection
'I will graduate from secondary school next year and have a lot of questions on my mind, especially about what to study in university. These are difficult questions since I am interested in so many topics. I love maths, baking cakes, and an important part of my daily routine is sport. I do everything to carry a healthy lifestyle. But above all, I find protection of our environment extraordinarily crucial. My dream has been to combine my studies, interests, and hobbies, and open an environmentally friendly, healthy confectionary to show people that treating ourselves with delicacies can be done in a sustainable way without harming our nature.'
It is always cheerful to talk to youngsters who are well aware of challenges of our present and who show great willingness to foster a positive change or be the change themselves.
Involvement in the PureGreen Project
'While I was pondering about my future I came across a project called PureGreen at my school. I was asked to be the coordinator of generation Z in their nature park working group for zero waste initiatives. In the group, I and other students have the possibility to share our thoughts with professionals of environmental protection, forestry, and education.'
Leading the Way in Zero Waste Initiatives
Besides the activities in the working group for zero waste initiatives, like organising events in a zero waste manner and creating guidelines for zero waste events, Angelika tries to reach out to her generation with her blog articles in the project blog and by sharing stories of Instagram influencers. She told us about the changes she would like to see in society.
Visions for a More Sustainable Society
'I think that package-free stores are an excellent initiative, but they are only available in bigger cities, and sadly it is not very easy in smaller towns to use own ware for buying certain products. I would also find it really useful if the pupils at school had a stand-alone subject on environmental protection. Nowadays, this highly important topic is integrated into biology, and pupils only have a few lessons on which are hardly enough to truly engage them to change their behaviour. I am shocked to see the huge piles of trash alongside the roads or in the forests, on fields, basically everywhere. All this said, it feels so good and motivating to have found the project where I can work with people who share the same mind-set.'
Angelika is truly passionate to learn as much as possible on her favourite topic, so she participated in further project activities, such as collecting rubbish in forests. She also got a chance to highlight her experiences on a study trip to Graz, Austria.
Study Trip to Graz: A Life-Changing Experience
'I got to go on a study trip to Graz with some other students, which was an amazing experience! We learnt a lot of new stuff on zero waste culture and my motivation got even more directed towards environmental protection. After all these experiences, I am actually more and more inclined to select environmental protection as my study path.'
About the PUREGREEN project
PUREGREEN project stands for a greening perspective in the cross-border nature park Írottkő-Geschriebenstein.
It aims at the long-term decrease of the waste load in the protected areas of the cross-border nature park with awareness-raising schemes, cross-border environmental-conscious pilot events to promote the zero-waste way of life. The project involves NGOs, schools and other actors to ensure the widest possible positive change in society.
The project is financed by the Interreg V-A Austria-Hungary Programme. It is a collaborative initiative between Írottkő Nature Park Association (Hungary), Nature Park Geschriebenstein –Írottkő (Burgenland, Austria) and Association for Waste Prevention (Styria, Austria).