SUMMING UP ACHIEVEMENTS OF GREEN LIVING GROUPS

After three months of actions, experimental Green Living groups of the Project have completed 5 themes, including Green Living, Water, Waste, Energy, Eco-Wise Consumption, and Safe House.

COMPARED RESULTS BEFORE AND AFTER- PROGRAM

The compared results before and after participation in Green Living action at home show that changes in living habits lead to positive benefits for the environment and community, as well as reductions in  family expenses. However, there are some inaccuracies because some households met difficulties in the accurate measurement on some categories. But most families said that the real results may be better than these figures. 

Relatively comparing among groups, some groups gain special success in some themes:

After participating in the program, group members understand more about sustainable activities. Specifically, members accurately assess their habit to each sustainable activity in Audit table. 

MORE GREEN LIVING NEWS

Putting the priority of saving finance into clean energy or electricity saving equipment:

Using less coal for cooking with no change in cost

Many households save by suitably turning off lights and equipments when not using electricity, changing the lights, etc. and using this money to charge for cooking by electricity. Numbers on electricity use may not change, the expense may not change either, but the amount of coal decreases and the family’s health is better.  

Investing in electric power saving equipments

Some families invest in buying a pressure cooker and Compaq lights. This money will be compensated by a saved electricity expense from these equipments.

Attending the meetings and sharing action practice to help living green effectively

Members of groups who participated in meetings (such as Song Xanh, Binh Minh, Tien Phong, Tuong Lai, Ben Vung, and Than Thien) are all groups which bring savings to families and contributed more benefits to the environment.

 Members in that groups all have tips for better green living practice in which they share with each other. Solidarity and Spity of Green Living are better, too.

Recording changes

This task is considered most important. Recording helps members measure their results and follow their level of commitments to change their living habits. More importantly, recording changes is parallel to action practices to increase awareness and creativity when practicing ecological actions.

Some initial problems that members face are that they have not correctly assessed the reality. (For example, initial auditing is higher than the real audits). Secondly, the number of measurement is very general. Moreover there are some disagreements on the list among members. The reason is that they were not aware of the value of recording in supporting habit change.

The necessity is that all members should exchange their recording, they should monitore their actions and result as a part of practice.

The project will simplify tables so that recording, measurement and assessment of members will be much easier.