by Cherie Birkner

What is your next local destination? It’s summer in the city, and the perfect time to go out and get in touch with nature. So I called up my friend Yolanda, who is also part of the Creative Matterz Fund team, and asked her to join me for a day trip with Wildling minimal shoes. If you don’t already know them, you can have a close look at their sustainability standards here. This year Wildling has advance their goal on making a positive impact and joined the network 1% for the Planet as well as partnering up with the Peetzig farm and Bienenbotschaft to enable a six-hectare flowering meadow to providing a fresh feast for bees and other pollinating insects- You know, those whose food supply is steadily dwindling due – among other things – to the use of pesticides in intensive agriculture. So here are 5 conscious things you can do this summer inspired by our daycation with Wildling.

GO ON A LOCAL DAYCATION

Choose a destination you have never been to before within a 100km radius. Choosing a destination near you over a short trip with the airplane can easily save a whole year worth of a climate compatible emissions budget for one person (1,500kg). Another upside to a daycation is that by leaving in the morning and returning in the evening, you can be flexible to make sure you score a day with beautiful weather.

HOW MANY TYPES OT TREES CAN YOU COUNT?

Did you know there are 8 million total estimated animal and plant species on Earth [1]? That’s almost 50 times as many words you can find in an English encyclopedia! Now how many types of trees alone can I name which grow in my region… Chestnut tree, linden tree, oak tree, pine tree, maple tree... and here it already gets hard without Ecosia for me, even though there are over 50 types of trees in and around Berlin! So if you are anything like me, this calls for an attentive walk to seeing how many types of trees you can count.

On this Afternoon walk, I discovered this beautiful old tree right around the corner. It’s a catalpa which is really native to warm temperatures and subtropical regions such as North America, the Caribbean, and East Asia.

DISCOVER A NEW LAKE AND TREAT IT WELL

Hop on to Treeday to explore your area for a lake you haven’t visited before. For extra hot days, Wildling has a selection of minimal sandals - with +/- 27° on our excursion we were perfectly happy in the HANAMI and the TANUKI NIJI models, thanks to light and breathable shoe materials.

Here are some tips for how you can help preserve the biodiversity of the lakes you visit:

• Choose biodegradable and reef-friendly sunscreen. Here are some tips on what ingredients to pay attention to:

  • Ingredients to avoid: oxybenzone, octinoxate, homosalate, octisalate, octocrylene, and avobenzone, parabens, 4-methyl benzylidene camphor, para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA), and triclosan.

  • Ingredients to look for: Zinc oxide is a common ingredient used in chemical-free sunscreens. Zinc oxide is biodegradable and is not linked to any health concerns.

• Go plastic free and bring fresh fruits, nuts, reusable water bottles and sandwiches packed in tupperware.

• Use a blanket or towel with natural fibers rather than picknick blankets, because these have a plastic layer which makes it hard for the bugs and grass underneath to breath.

• Leave the boombox at home and enjoying the sound of nature instead. See how many types of birds you can hear chirp.

• Do you have left over food you won’t eat? Offer it to some other lake visitors - this way nothing goes to waste.

5 MINUTE CLEANUP

Plastic packaging, bottle tops, cigarette butts, and broken lighters, are just a small selection of things which some seam to imagine will magically disappear when they leave then in the park. Oh and when you start looking out for this it seems almost unreal how much litter you can pick up in just 5 minutes. Surely there are places cleaner than Berlin, but nature will appreciate you taking 5 minutes for a cleanup! If you are with family/friends, you can also turn this into a game of who can collect more. This will help prevent toxins from entering the surroundings and keep rubbish away from animals who may mistake it for food.

DIGITAL DETOX

Did you know that on the Global Day of Climate Action Wildling closed their online shop? This was not the first time either, previously for the Global Climate Strike on May 24th 2019 Wildling had also taken action for the climate by closing up.

Have you done a phone free day before? Or internet free? How about social media free? Now, if I’m honest I don’t remember the last time I went 24h without looking at a phone screen, so this is still on my personal summer want-to-do list. Hey, what email or post is really so important that it can’t wait a day.

Sounces:

[1] IPBES, Media Release, Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’ May 2019