The CALO Education Scheme

Following on from the successful establishment of the Woodland Scheme, funds generated by it's activities will be used to sponsor our education programme. Aimed initially at Primary, then Secondary level students, this will, in very practical ways, use trees to illustrate the value of fossil fuels as a resource not to be squandered.

If you collect or saw and split logs before burning them, you become accutely aware of both the characteristics of the material burnt and the effort needed to create warmth. You see and think about the size of a log before adding to the fire, judge how many logs you have, how long they must last, economy comes naturally.

CALO Woodland will enable students to equate energy use to trees. The fossil fuels we currently take for granted are the result of billions of years of composting vegetation –‘trees’ of the past laid down in layers, squashed, fermented and naturally processed into coal, oil and gas. Yet petrol, oil and gas are supplied and used almost invisibly (other than in the family budget!) without either raw material or combustion process being visible or tangible; electricity also to most youngsters merely comes at the flick of a switch.

A simple calculation compares the energy stored in the wood of a medium sized 50 year old tree with the energy in a litre of petrol. In this way car miles can be expressed as trees equivalents. The same can be done for other energy usage. For example how many times can you run a washing machine with the energy stored in one tree. Knowing how many tree equivalents of petrol you are using for journey we believe will help you place a higher value on travel.

Our goal – to help people to recognise the true value of fossil fuels, to encourage active reduction of such things as our car journeys, to help us all to think more about how much and at what temperature we must heat our homes, etc. To do small things and, ultimately, big things to positively change our lifestyles to reduce the current levels of conspicuous consumption.

What better way to build upon CALO Woodland's carbon capture and long-term sequestration schemes!

If you are interested in knowing more, or in helping us to develop materials or deliver the scheme, please contact us on education@calowoodland.org

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