Climate Bonus
What is the climate bonus?
The "climate bonus" is a local complementary currency with which we want to encourage people to think about their everyday consumption decisions and at the same time promote and reward climate-friendly offers. In this way, we increase the attractiveness and visibility of sustainable offers in our region. True to the motto - from Leipzig for Leipzig - we support local climate protection measures directly on site.
Who hasn´t asked the question – isn´t there anything more sustainable?
Does this product have to be made of (disposable) plastic?
Do I need to buy something new or can I repair it or buy it second-hand?
What climate-friendly alternatives are there in and around Leipzig?
How can I make a real difference to the climate through my purchasing decisions and behaviour?
What other ways can I effectively reduce my carbon footprint?
We want to provide answers to these and further questions and also point out ecologically compatible alternatives from regional suppliers.
The Climate Bonus Principle – reduce your carbon footprint in three simple steps
- Information: As individuals, but also as a society, we leave traces in our environment. This affects almost every aspect of our lives, from travel and consumption to resource and energy use. You can find out more about the climate bonus on our website www.klimabonus.info. There you can find ideas and help to reduce your own carbon footprint. Our CO2 calculator can help you get an overview of your own CO2 balance and calculate your carbon footprint.
- Reduction: We want to reward specific measures to avoid carbon emissions by issuing climate bonuses. With the climate bonus, we also reward local actors who are committed to sustainability and actively support climate protection. One carbon offset corresponds to a saving of 10kg of CO2. This creates transparency and makes climate protection measurable and understandable.
- Offsetting: As we cannot, with the best will in the world, make our carbon footprint disappear completely, we want to use the climate bonus to set up regional offsetting projects. This is our way of ensuring that the money we raise stays in the region where it is needed. A small proportion of the compensation will be used to create new climate bonuses, which will flow into the incentive system for CO2 reduction.
The Climate Bonus is aimed at private individuals as well as large and small companies, local institutions (i.e. associations, citizens' initiatives and other non-profit organisations) and municipalities. When choosing our partners, we always focus on the idea of sustainability and environmentally friendly action.
How to communicate with us?
Please note: In the daily work and activities of our projects, we normally use German as our main language. But most of us also speak English or other languages. Even if you’ve just started or are still learning German, please do not hesitate to contact us and participate in our activites. We are looking forward to welcoming you.
Contact details
Green Backyards
About the project
With the “Grüne Höfe” (Green Backyards) project the BUND Leipzig aims to promote the ecological redesign of backyards and other open spaces, as well as a long-term commitment to the maintenance and enhancement of these areas. Both the users and the owners of the area are enabled to contribute to the environmentally friendly development of the city.
Leipzig’s countless backyards are an essential part of the urban landscape. With the right design and care, they can make an important contribution to the regulation of the city’s climate, the protection of species and the well-being of residents. The project aims to create new habitats that link existing urban biotopes, promote structural diversity and thus effectively support local biodiversity. In addition, open spaces within a city have a positive impact on the urban climate by counteracting the urban heat island effect.
As well as advising and supporting interested tenants and communities, the project also Leipzig’s large housing associations. In cooperation with all parties involved, possible steps will be discussed to transform a short-cut lawn into an ecologically valuable habitat with benefits for people and animals.
Get involved!
How can you turn your backyard into a “green backyard”?
Want to improve your backyard and help protect urban nature and the climate? Join the “Green Backyards”!
The local branch of BUND Leipzig supports you with the following offers in order to achieve our common goal of the ecological upgrading of private open spaces:
- Personalised garden design guidelines
- Professional advice on the choice of ecologically valuable plants
- Financial assistance with material costs
- Help in convincing the owners
- Loan of gardening tools and books on plant selection, plant protection, garden design and more
- Help with organising and holding public backyard celebrations
Important note: The design activities must be carried out or commissioned by the project participants themselves.
How to get started
Let’s talk about and realise the potential of your backyard. Fill in our application form and send it to Henrike Barske: gruenehoefe(at)bund-leipzig.de
Tips and tricks
- Brand-new: You can share your eco-friendly project in our “Green Backyards” Telegram chat group! If you would like to join, send an email to Nicole Brühl or tick the box below when subscribing for the mailing service.
- Before you start, you will need permission from your landlord or housing association. You can find a template for contacting your landlord / housing association in Word and PDF format here.
- Not sure what plants are in your garden, but want to get an idea? Take a walk with an app! We recommend “Flora Incognita”.
- Our financial support covers things like seeds, plants, soil, nesting boxes and the hire of heavy machinery. Unfortunately, we cannot cover the cost of materials such as wood to build raised garden beds. However, you can get in touch with the “Restlos” project who can provide you with materials.
- Guidelines for building nest boxes can be found in the brochure: “Vielfalt sorgt für Vielfalt” by BUND.
“Green Backyards” Mailing service
Backyard facts, event information and project successes are sent straight to your inbox via our mailing list. Simply sign up here to receive news:
Background Information:
Leipzig keeps growing! Housing is scarce, construction sites are everywhere, and more and more brownfield sites are disappearing, taking plants and animals with them. In order to ensure Leipzig’s attractive green character, quality of life and urban biodiversity, it is not only housing that can be redensified. The rest of the immediate residential area is also in urgent need of careful internal development.
Until now, the functional green and open spaces in residential areas have often reduced the quality of life and provided few opportunities for residents to experience nature. Due to the intensive maintenance of the open spaces, there is a lack of structures for native animal and plant species to live in. In many places, monotonous lawns with evergreen hedges dominate – desolation all year round. The same is true for many backyards in Leipzig’s urban area. Used as parking spaces for bicycles and rubbish bins, the potential of many backyards to become valuable green spaces is completely untapped.
This huge and so far largely untapped potential for more urban nature and quality of life is to be unlocked by designing these areas close to nature!
Please note: Our funding can cover the transformation of up to 30 backyards. The date of the application will determine the award of the grant. The 31st of November 2023 is the deadline for all invoices arising from the project funding.
Contact details
Allerlei To Go
Please note: There will be more detailed information here soon: www.zeit-fuer-mehrweg.de
The amendment to the Packaging Act came into force on January 1st 2023. To help catering and food businesses implement the new requirements, we are offering a telephone advice service in conjunction with Leipzig's city cleaning service:
The service can be reached on weekdays on Mondays and Wednesdays between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. at 0151 56806972.
This service hotline is part of a comprehensive advisory and support programme implemented as part of the Federal Government's Sustainable Inner Cities and Centres programme. It is aimed at businesses in Mockau, Georg-Schumann-Strasse and the city centre. The programme will be expanded in the coming months. In addition to further information for businesses and customers, there will be the possibility of financial support for the introduction of reusable systems. The rewards will be paid from the third quarter of 2023. In order to achieve the widest possible reach, the DEHOGA Hotel- und Gaststättenverband Sachsen e.V., the Leipzig Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the Leipzig City Council will be involved.
When the new regulations come into force, all businesses that serve food to go will be required to offer reusable packaging. This could include foodservice outlets, restaurants, cafes and snack bars, but also delivery services, canteens, mobile catering businesses, events, cinemas or even parts of food retail such as salad bars. Smaller businesses with no more than 5 employees and a sales area of less than 80 square metres can also comply with the obligation to provide reusable packaging by allowing consumers to fill their own containers.
Subscribe to the newsletter now and receive regular updates on events, advice and funding opportunities!
Contact details
VielFalterGarten Project
VielFalterGarten (Foto: Louis Avrey)
In the ‘VielFalterGarten’ project BUND Leipzig along with the UFZ, the iDiv and the City of Leipzig as well as the population of Leipzig, want to study and protect the butterflies found in Leipzig. Through our educational workshops and other activities, we want to impart knowledge about butterflies and their habitats to all those living in Leipzig and, at the same time, encourage them to design urban green spaces and city gardens in such a way as to contribute to the preservation of biodiversity. This can only be done with volunteers who are interested in learning about, observing and counting butterflies. In addition to observations and counts, conservation measures in our own gardens, community gardens or other green spaces are important because only in this way that we can create new habitats for all developmental stages of butterflies and also attract rarer species back to urban areas. By implementing conservation measures, people are able to see and experience results and successes of our butterfly conservation in their own environment.
We at BUND Leipzig want to build a network of individuals, associations, city gardens, allotment gardens, schools and local authorities. Together we want to spread seeds, maintain project areas and count butterflies. In this way, we will actively contribute to the preservation and expansion of urban butterfly habitats and, by collecting data, for butterflies and help improve knowledge and future conservation through data collection.
Here is a look at the app we use for counting. If you don't have a smartphone, you can also record your butterfly sightings on record sheets.
Do you want to protect butterflies with us? Then register yourself and your garden HERE. The project is limited to the city of Leipzig.
Visit vielfaltergarten.de and find out what your garden needs and how you can observe and count butterflies.
Interested people and volunteers: Please contact us at vielfaltergarten(at)bund-leipzig.de
Contact details
Sufficient Gastronomy
(Agnes Reuter)
Following the successful completion of the "Recycling2Go" project, BUND Leipzig started the follow-up project "Sufficient gastronomy in Leipzig" in May 2020. After the successful establishment of the RECUP (reusable cups), the sustainable transformation of Leipzig's gastronomy continues.
This project tested and analyzed measures for avoiding packaging waste and food waste in Leipzig's gastronomy. In doing so, it was also important to us that the measures taken had low financial and organizational costs.
We wanted to create a place where innovative and sustainable alternatives as well as their advantages and problems in implementation could be discussed and impulses from the gastronomy passed on directly to the city. The goal was to maintain and expand the network already established within the "Recycling2Go" project, so that restaurant owners and other gastronomers, the actors of civil society as well as the city of Leipzig were provided with a platform to get in contact and exchange ideas more easily.
You can find more information concerning the project here.
Contact details
Urban Gardening
(Jana Burmeister)
Urban gardening encompasses different forms of gardening in the urban areas, all of which share the same goals: participation and a sense of community.
BUND Leipzig runs two community gardens in different stages of development. In the west of Leipzig our community garden Grünau is being developed and in the Lene Voigt Park you will find the "many species garden" of the local group East, the VAGaBUND Lene (VAGaBUND: Viele-Arten-Garten - many species garden). Unfortunately, we had to give up the area of our third garden VAGaBUND Connewitz in 2018.
In the gardens, the focus is not only on yield, but also on the socio-cultural use of the former fallow land as open space for our group meetings or events.
Are you intereseted not only in learning about gardening, but also in contributing to the creation of green urban spaces? Get in touch and come to one of our meetings!