As a guest at Bellevue Palace in Berlin

The Department of Bioprocess Engineering (BioVT) was represented as an exhibitor with a stand at this year's exhibitor fair Woche der Umwelt 2024 (“Week of the Environment 2024”), which was organized by the German Federal Environmental Foundation (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt; DBU) in cooperation with the Federal President. The Woche der Umwelt 2024 took place from the 4th to the 5th of June in Bellevue Palace Park under the motto ‘Together for climate neutrality’. In addition to numerous panel discussions and specialist forums on topics relating to environmental protection and the exchange of ideas on possible solutions for the fight against climate change, around 190 exhibitors from business and technology, research and science as well as civil society presented innovative and forward-looking solutions for responsibly shaping change.

BioVT presented the DBU-funded GewässerCampus project (grant number 35811-01), which offers school pupils the opportunity to investigate the quality of an aquatic ecosystem (lake or river) close to their school, to familiarise themselves with the parameters used to assess water quality and to research these independently using scientific working methods in field experiments. By combining the experimental measurement protocols with a portable photometer specially developed for this use, various parameters and the concentration of classic pollutants such as ammonium, nitrate, and phosphate in a water sample can be quantitatively determined. The measurement results can then be evaluated, analyzed, and published by the school students using a specially developed interactive web application which gives the project its citizen science character. The aim is to ensure that environmental analysis does not remain a purely theoretical area but to sensitize pupils to external influences and their consequences in ecosystems. In addition, building on this knowledge, pupils can develop approaches for protecting water bodies based on a real database.

All the materials and reagents required for analyzing water samples are compactly provided in a GewässerCampus experiment box. The experiment box is part of the BioVT experiment box lending system. It thereby can be borrowed free of charge by teachers for their lessons.

We thank the DBU and the Federal President for the opportunity to present the GewässerCampus project and the Chair of BioVT as well as for the many pleasant conversations, the great interest in our project, and the many profitable impressions during our visit to Woche der Umwelt 2024.