Green Blog : 23rd Aug 2007

Well, what a week. The Isle of Wight zoo held a 'green' week, promoting sustainability through displays, children's quizzes and inviting local projects, such as yours truly.

I love meeting and talking to the public (anyone who knows me knows that I can talk the hind legs off the preverbal), so we came up with more than just a display about Green Island and how great it is. We decided to not only make people more aware of sustainability issues surrounding tourism, but we also wanted to get something useful back from them.

So after careful thought and a huge budget, we finished up with a map of the isle of wight (acquired from Isle of Wight Tourism, sorry guys!), a map of the UK (courtesy of a local shop) and some stickers.

With these sophisticated pieces of equipment, after a week we have successfully built up a picture of where visitors to the zoo live and travelled from, where they are staying, where they have visited on the island and how they have travelled, (car, bus etc).

The visitors were asked to use red spots for car travel, green for walking / cycling, yellow for trains and blue for bus / coach. After a week of getting people to 'spot' the maps (The UK map showed where they came from), the island map looked like it had a really nasty dose of nappy rash, red spots all over. I had seriously underestimated just how many red stickers were going to be used and had to get new supplies on several occasions. The area around Sandown and the Needles ended up being a topographical 3D representation of the area, the sheer volume of stickers producing hills. The Isle of Wight map is here for all to see, and I think I can honestly say that people didn't realise just how many car journeys are made while on holiday. A lot of parents were looking very guilty and ashamed as their kids were gaily planting red spots all over demanding to know where else they had been that week. Finding someone who was able to place a green sticker was a real event, and they felt a sense of achievement upon the 'ceremony of the placing of the green spot'.

The zoo itself had done a fantastic job of promoting sustainability to its visitors. A children's quiz was set up with answers planted all round the zoo - questions like' 'how much drinking water can 1 litre of oil pollute' , (I know the answer to this, I think its one million, well, that's what I told them when they failed to find the answer elsewhere -I hope I was right!). They also had a fantastic display in a small area to show how people can use their gardens or other outdoor area to encourage wildlife, with demonstrations of bug homes, simple bird baths, log piles, bird feeders, seed producing plants and a compost site. The zoo also set up a 'pledge' tree, re-using an old Christmas tree, so people could write pledges to do their bit for the environment on labels, and hang them on the tree for all to see. I think this all goes to show just what can be done to inspire people with a little bit of imagination, not just at the zoo but anywhere the public go. So well done to Tracy and the rest of the team at the Isle of Wight Zoo. I sincerely hope to be back next year, perhaps with less hectic weather, maybe....