Aachen

897 people reached in Aachen!

Everyone joined us in the streets of this beautiful city in Germany: younger people, the elderly, the mayor and local media, or curious passers-by; these were the people with whom we were able to have meaningful conversations about fast fashion and about how we can change this together if we all make an effort.

10 September, Aachen

During the campaign we met with Hilde Scheidt, deputy mayor of Aachen, Mona Pursey, regional Promoter of sustainable development for the region of Aachen and Albert Borchardt, member of the city council of Eschweiler which is the neighboring city of Aachen. 

When we first described the project to the mayor, she was reluctant and she turned the conversation to be more focused on consumers. She explained they have a lot of education programmes where they involve young people to learn about racism, diversity and democracy. It seems more focused on social issues and human rights than environment and sustainability. So we tried to convince her to add more classes on consumerism, sustainable practices and fair trade. Then we talked about textile trash and how it is managed by different NGOs (second hand shops, GreenPeace etc.), but nothing on a systemic level is happening. She was trying to avoid the question saying we can do more on a national level then at city level. 

When they all kept saying what can we do we mentioned the system of sustainability goals they have in Augsburg. Mrs. Pursey was very excited about the idea so we continued the discussion on how to establish a similar platform in Aachen so NGOs and municipality are collaborating closer and managing the resources more transparently to improve the city in a more sustainable way. 

After this the dynamic of the conversation shifted and they became more interested and proactive. We think the mayor was the most interested in our suggestion on how to manage lights on advertisements and they were excited to hear about Lyon’s (city in France) example who turned off the advertisements on public transport. The mayor also expressed interest in our idea to raise prices on half of the advertisement spaces and lower them on the other half to make them more accessible to small (preferably sustainable and slow fashion) enterprises. In the end, she wanted us to come back next year and to a meeting with the youth of Aachen to discuss sustainability. Overall we were pleased with the meeting and we felt like our meeting could have an impact on Aachen. 

Klara & Lune