This year Bristol won the European Green Capital Award for 2015.
So, what does a green city look like?
How do you integrate urban living with environmental responsibility?
How does a city become an ecosystem?
How can locals engage with biodiversity?
How can a deprived area become sustainable?
How can locals be persuaded about getting involved in the new projects?
Watch this six-minute video, which is a compendium of the five films Bristol presented to the European Green Capital Award jury, and find out the answers to the questions above.
Watch the video again and answer the questions below. You may already be able to answer some of them.
The activity is suitable for Intermedio 2 students.
1 Which four words summarise the vision for Bristol and for Bristol Futures?
2 What will Bristol achieve next year in terms of waste?
3 How do Bristol inhabitants get familiar on how to save energy?
4 What was celebrated on 23 May 2012?
5 How many languages are spoken in Bristol?
6 What is North West?
7 What is the city's policy about persuading people?
8 How many universities are there in Bristol? What are they working together on?
To check your answers you can read the transcript below.
Bristol is an inspiring place: Creative, open connected and green. It's big enough to have challenges but small enough to be collaborative and inclusive. It's a great example of a city that is integrating urban living with environmental responsibility. Everyone can enjoy nature and green space within easy reach, even in the heart of the city. We are a knowledge-based city built on the foundations of two leading universities transferring and creating knowledge with businesses that are at the leading edge of change. We are competitive in the modern economy and creating the future economy of low-waste, low carbon, smarter work.
The local authority is central to leadership and to inspiring change in the city and a green strategy is at the heart of council planning.
Bristol Futures is our new grouping of different teams within Bristol City Council helping to achieve our climate change ambitions. In four words: creative, smart, green and connected, that's the vision for Bristol and for Bristol Futures. It is about future proof in the city to make sure that it's a good place to do business and a good place to live.
The city is an ecosystem. The urban environment and its people and the key to change is getting them involved. We are progressing quickly. We've adopted a policy of reduce, reuse, recycle, and we don't incinerate to avoid landfill. We went from one bin to multiple bins, reducing the total amount of domestic
waste by a quarter. The language changed: ‘waste’ becomes a resource and next year we will achieve our vision of zero landfill. We have an open approach: demonstration projects in the city share their practical experience of eco-homes or installing solar energy. We support social enterprises sharing their knowledge, working with people by enabling them to show each other.
Everybody can identify with one of the homes. These are ordinary people doing good stuff to their house and these are eco-warriors. If we are all working together, we can, really, really make something happen here.
We get people engaged with biodiversity in a new way.
Its May 25th 2012, just a couple days after International Year of Biodiversity. We are here at Arnos Vale cemetery for our fourth annual Bio Blitz. We’ve got a couple of hundred kids on site, already out with scientists surveying the site. We’re hoping to find a thousand different species over the next thirty hours, and these kids are off and running just about to find and record our first species of the day.
And we are inclusive. We work with a huge range of people. There are eighty-nine languages in Bristol communities. We connect directly with people’s real lives.
North West is a test bed community, a municipal housing a state in a deprived area of the city. European funding enabled the creation of a highly sustainable community building that acted as a focus for engaging the people in the green agenda. North West is very eco-friendly. We care about the environment just as much, if not more, than the posh parts of Bristol. In North West it’s the young people who tell the stories using video and animation.
I’m off to see Dave. He's got solar panels on his roof.
Persuading people is not about telling, it's about showing. We are good at that: A factual broadcasting center of excellence, a knowledge hub, a creative industry city with a sustainable heart and global impact.
When we have exciting projects, we share their knowledge. We promote good community stories so people are inspired by people like them.
We've embedded green thinking at the center of our city, so we’ve embedded green technology and green business, and that means that we can engage with the business community, with people such as you can see behind me, but also we’ve embedded in our communities and that means we can get to the hard-to-reach people, deprived people in our city in a kind of a virtual circle working with business, working with them to ensure our green future. And that’s a message, we can win the green capital, we can send out around Europe because it's a very very sustainable model based on a sustainable technology, I think that's a very very exciting concept for Europe going into the future.
Here at Bristol we have two leading-edge universities working together on new research and innovation to support developments to protect the environment and to boost the economy of the southwest.
Hello, this is Nick Clarke, the leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Deputy Prime Minister in the UK government. I fully support Bristol’s excellent bid which I believe is a fitting tribute to the work that has been carried out in partnership by the council and others to promote a green and sustainable agenda across the city. The UK government recognizes the significance of the European green award and as the winning city in 2014 Bristol will engage widely with other cities, providing a catalyst for the sharing of best practice across the whole of Europe.
Bristol is the green capital of the UK. We want to be European green capital in 2014 and inspire change across Europe.
