National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI)-Wales Eco Teams Project

Global Action Plan’s Eco Teams is a practical project that helps households to reduce their impact on the environment and to save money. It seeks to change consumer behaviour at the community level through education, training and expert support.

Through this project, fifteen Women’s Institutes (WI) members were trained by Global Action Plan to become Eco Team team leaders. Global Action Plan’s Eco Teams project demonstrates a wide range of consumption activities that contribute to climate change - including energy use, waste and shopping, food, travel and water.

Through the Eco Teams Project, the WI aimed to increase both ethical and sustainable consumption, and to decrease negative environmental impacts among WI members.

The 15 WI team leaders each then went on to recruit and lead an Eco Team - groups of 6-8 people representing their individual households - and in all 81 people participated in the project.

The Eco Teams would meet once a month for four months to learn and support each other while making small but significant changes to their households’ behaviours.  With the help of materials and team leaders, the Eco Teams participants would share experiences, ideas and achievements on the environmental action that they could take or have already taken.

The Eco Teams project aimed to enable and empower WI participants to understand not only the realities of climate change and the need for associated lifestyle changes, but also to pave the way for any forthcoming legislation which may impact lifestyle.

Eco Team members were provided with measuring sheets to record their waste output, recycling, energy and water measurements each month throughout the project. This measuring played a crucial role in helping participants to assess their daily routines.

This data was then sent into the NFWI-Wales Office to be checked before being forwarded to Global Action Plan to produce a household feedback report for each participant.

An overall report showed an average result for combined Eco Teams: households had on average reduced their waste by 16.4%, and if they continue in this vein, this would equate to saving 35kg of waste per household per year, equivalent to the weight of 18 telephone directories.

Households reduced their recycling by an average of 5.2% (equal to 16kg annually). Electricity consumption was reduced by an average 12.2%, which would equate to a saving of 573 kWh of electricity per household per year, enough to toast nearly 32,000 slices of bread!

Heating energy consumption was reduced by an average of 8.1%, direct CO2 emissions from household energy consumption was reduced by an average of 10.9%, and water consumption was reduced by an average of 22.2%, which equates to a saving of 19,902 litres of water per household per year.

The WI Eco Teams project owed its success largely to the commitment of its members. WI members are renowned for their passion, energy and active citizenship. They are perceived as having a strong sense of community and consideration of social, political and environmental issues.

Many of the members involved were already aware of the need to address their impact on the environment and had already taken some steps to minimise their impact.  The Eco Teams project was able to build on this platform through the provision of information and practical advice on simple ‘next steps’ which fitted with members’ existing lifestyles.

The format of the meetings suited the WI members well as members were already accustomed to regular meetings as a conduit for information exchange and were keen to be involved. As the WI members were active, the team leaders were able to recruit their teams from within the WI membership.

A project of this type could easily be replicated by other membership organisations such as the WI. The partnership with Global Action Plan works well where there is a good organisational structure to disseminate information and ideas for practical action.