February 09, 2022
Gathering at a roundtable to brainstorm and discuss ideas for future activities can be a magical moment. While coffee mugs and water glasses are being filled, a cocktail of emotions and feelings is poured into the (virtual) room. The initial boredom turns into excitement, the social pressure discomfort for waiting your turn to speak and the frustration for hearing your idea being spoken by another participant turns into relief and joy when your words are heard and appreciated by the group. And when your idea is shared and agreed upon and everybody starts thinking how to make it happen, your heart thrills. That thrill is exactly what you need to remember when the time comes to write down that idea with clear words and to design a project plan. Project planning is a harsh and unfeeling process that can kill all the joy that triggered the approval of your idea but it represents one of the most effective and efficient way to make it real. Are you real doer? A true environmental doer? Then keep hold of that initial thrill to plan your project and steer it well when the first challenges pop out. Looking back at your achieved goals, you will be eternally grateful for having designed and managed your idea with a project-based method: it led you to concrete and successful results. The gratification of achieving what you had dreamt is as big and far bigger of the one you felt for getting your idea approved.
As GreenMarked, that is exactly what we did and felt. Our ideas became projects and with gratitude and satisfaction we here present to you our 2021 project results.
GreenMarked blog
A seagull holding a plastic package in its peak (Ingrid Taylar, 2016).
The blog remains our core project. By defining article standards and guidelines, revamping our blog page, and winning a fund to increase agroecological knowledge and know-hows in Trentino, our environmental blogging activity was significantly boosted in 2021. Overall, we published 78 posts on our Telegram channel and 32 blog articles on our website. Thanks to the integration of a WordPress translation plugin, the article language can now be instantly switched from Italian to English, and vice versa. Our top three articles in terms of views are “A case study on the success of The Ocean Cleanup” (799 views), “2020: Turning a Personal Blog into a Business (213 views), and “The Interest of Fossil Fuel Corporations and Agribusiness Enterprises in Climate Policies” (188 views). The views count is only approximate because articles and posts were also read directly on our Telegram channel via our beautiful “Instant view” feature.
Our blog boost attracted new story writing collaborations: one with the “Martino Martini” high school of Mezzolombardo (Trento), one with the “Edmund Mach” farming school of San Michele all’Adige (Trento) and one with the Free University of Bolzano-Bozen (Bolzano). After a short trial, external authors can become permanent collaborators. We constantly crave for environmental articles to publish, so if you like writing and have an environmental passion and background, contact us at our email address info@greenmarked.it or at our Telegram InfoPoint @greenmarked_info.
Communication
Besides our website, the blogging activity increased also on our Telegram channel, Instagram and Twitter accounts, and on our newsletter. Due to the “Instant view” feature and its versatility of media type content, our Telegram channel kept its position of first social media platform. Annexed to our articles and updates, we posted photos, videos, documents, links, polls, audio recordings and developed stickers (Green Wolf), animated stickers (Lupus Ecologicus), and environmental GIFs. The channel counts 127 subscribers and each posts is averagely viewed 120 times with peaks up to 527.
Telegram is not only the home of our channel, but also of our InfoPoint account, Social Media Detox public group, and GreenMarked Discussion group. Disconnectedly from our Tuesdays’ project update and Fridays’ article routine, we publish here environmental news and green jobs offers or calls. Join the group if you are looking for employment in the environmental sector! Differently from our Twitter account which never really lift off the ground, our Instagram grew steadily throughout the year thanks to our new communication manager. Today our account counts 135 followers. Finally, we introduced a monthly newsletter for our group members and friends. Thanks to our stylish MailChimp template, the newsletter provides quality updates on the monthly upcoming events and a review on the past month project developments.
Social Media Detox
In terms of social and economic relevance, the 2021 Social Media Detox season can be seen as the point of time where non-project-based Detox initiatives closed the gap with the project-based ones. Welcoming a total of 410 participants, we developed five major Detox initiatives: the Detox @ School collaboration with high school “Da Vinci” of Trento, the Social Media Detox – Work & Focus camp for young adults, the “Ri-Generazione Detox in Piana” for teens and young people of Trentino, the “Digital Gym & Geocaching race” combo for firefighter trainees of Trentino and a private company of South Tyrol, and the “Digital detox and education” training program for Trentino sports teachers.
The different goals and target audience of the five different Detox initiatives highlight the versatility of our Social Media Detox. It has been a constant and regular evolution and a forced adaption to the new social mechanisms brought by the pandemic crisis. While evolving to new horizons, our Social Media Detox will always maintain its prime mission of being an amazing get-together moment.
Read here the comprehensive review of our 2021 season.
Agrecol Trees project
Started in January 2021 with the name of “Native Carbon Trees” project, our Bolivian tree-planting project successfully planted 81 agroecological trees in six sites of the metropolitan area of Cochabamba. Through six annual orders, we delivered the trees to three certified agroecological farming communities, two schools and a retirement home. Although the environmental impact of our (later renamed) Agroecol Trees project is minor, its social impact–project fund ratio is immense. With a total expenditure of 2,499.00 BOB equivalent to approximately 363.32 USD we involved 81 Bolivian recipients and 67 European donors. While a lot of stories should be written about both adopters and donors, the reason of their tree shared ownership and their interest in agroecology, you can read more about the technical details of our project implementation in our FAQ section.
To increase our environmental impact, we already placed a first order in 2022 of 30 trees and we designed a new tree planting project in the Amazon region of Bolivia. You will soon have the possibility to buy from our shop three native Amazon Forest tree species and seven new tropical fruit species!
Read the comprehensive 2021 review of the project at this link.
Green Talks
Formerly called “Green Webinars”, our Green Talks project developed seven different green webinars throughout the year. “Lie To Me”, “A Rigenerative EU”, “An Ecological Catechesis”, “An Environmental Time Voyage”, “The World Economic Forum’s Great Reset Initiative”, “Urban greening in Cochabamba”, and “COP 26 Highlights from Glasgow” were the seven titles. First broadcasted on the Zoom and Meet video sharing platforms, we eventually switched our Green Talks onto Telegram. In 2022 they will be streamed directly on our Telegram channel! Thanks to established collaborations and new partnership, we will invite new speakers to help us deliver environmental knowledge and news.
Eco-Battles comic
Committed to the delivery of sound environmental education, we are continuously looking for new and innovative media types to spread environmental knowledge and know-hows more effectively and to a larger audience. In the fashion of a fictional war battle between made-up environmentalists and polluting characters, we experimented with five comic chapters last November. The adventures and battles of Green Wolf and the Eco-Team received 277 views on our website and the HQ version of the five chapters were downloaded several times from our online shop. Following a public poll result, we will continue this new way of storytelling and integrated into our blogging activity. Stay tuned for the next Eco-Battles!
2022 GreenMarked Membership card
There is quite a lot to tell when you have to review a whole year of activity. This projects review gives you a good hint of who we are and what we do, but you can see a lot more on our website, Telegram channel and social media platforms. If you like what we are doing, want to support us or share the journey with us, get your 2022 membership card.
By purchasing the 2022 membership card you will concretely support independent environmental blogging, and you will get:
1. Free access to our Green Talks discussion moments
2. A 10 % discount on the Social Media Detox camps and initiatives
3. A personalized agroecological Bolivian tree.
Project planning, steering and reviewing is our modus operandi. We leave space for free experimentation but when the game gets real, we turn thoughts and ideas into projects. Project management is key to tackle environmental issues that often lead to CONTROVERSIAL dynamics both in the behavior of an individual and community. Solutions may not so straightforward and multi-dimensional problem-solving approaches require management methods of higher complexity. That is where project-based methods come in. The environment, individuals and societies need project-based initiatives to find and apply effective and COHERENT environmental solutions.
Cover and preview photo: South Tyrolean Dolomites seen by the Rittner Horn mountain (Bolzano, Italy). (Author, January 15, 2022).
