Stimulating Sustainability

World resources are currently being consumed at an unsustainable rate. Much of this consumption is focused in the developed world that is also best placed to develop technologies and attitudes to reduce the consumption rate. EPSRC are already contributing to new technologies and have many activities connected with sustainability and the environment including research on renewable energy, bio-fuels and material recycling.In brief, this proposal aims to work with nurseries and primary schools to introduce children to issues related to sustainable development through the production of highly interactive resources for use indoors and out.The project will be based on the development of two main resources provisionally called 'The Organic Garden' and 'Energy For Free'. These will be developed for use in nurseries and primary schools. The emphasis is therefore on highly interactive resources that fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum while fulfilling a role of EPSRC by encouraging the awareness and enthusiasm of children for engineering and science. As they will be used in schools they should ideally be relatively low cost to operate. These two resources will be able to operate individually but will ideally be used together as described below as 'Using The Wind And Sun To Make The Garden Grow'.