[enviro-vlc] UN initiative allows youth to look ‘cool’ while saving the planet

[Vern Weitzel]

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=28385&Cr=Climate&Cr1=

UN initiative allows youth to look ‘cool’ while saving the planet

The website is: http://www.youthxchange.net/

Document available at: 
http://www.unep.org/publications/search/pub_details_s.asp?ID=475


YouthXchange Training Kit

1 October 2008 – An updated version of an initiative by two United Nations 
agencies, seeking to reverse current “throw-away” trends by reducing waste from 
discarded products such as mobile phones and outdated fashion, allows youth to 
stay on top of trends while also taking part in the fight against climate change.

Produced by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Educational, 
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the YouthXchange Training Kit 
seeks to promote sustainable consumption among youth worldwide.

This year’s kit, revised from the previous 2002 version, includes a new chapter 
on how to balance aspirations of dressing fashionably while being aware of the 
impact of consumption on global warming.

Young people often try to establish their identities and seek social inclusion 
through what they purchase, but this exacerbates problems such as the depletion 
of the ozone layer.

YouthXchange, one of UNEP’s most important youth sustainable consumption-related 
activities, empowers young people “to make different choices in their daily 
lives and be actors of change,” said Gabriela Monteiro, one of the agency’s 
youth advisers.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner voiced hope that through their purchasing 
patterns, youth can influence the wider world and back the successor pact to the 
Kyoto Protocol, whose first commitment period ends in 2012, expected to be 
concluded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December next year.

“Young people in developed and rapidly developing economies can play a massive 
part in fighting climate change while being cool and keeping the planet cool, 
too,” he said.oung people in developed and rapidly developing economies can play 
a massive part in fighting climate change while being cool and keeping the 
planet cool, too

The scheme, translated and adapted into 19 languages, also discusses the UN 
Decade on Education for Sustainable Development from 2005-2014.

“Buying a product, whatever it is, is never a neutral act for the environment,” 
said UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura. “Its production, its use and the 
management of the waste it generates, all [have an] impact – to a greater or 
lesser degree – on our planet.”