Reinforcing sustainable food consumption through outdoor environmental education

00:00:35 – 00:00:53 Welcome everyone to SEI Asia’s podcast. This is the series on “Optimizing Urban Food Resilience”. My name is Pimolporn Jintarith. I’m a Research Associate at the Stockholm Environment Institute’s Asia Centre. I will be your host for this 3rd and final episode on strengthening and promoting circular food systems. 00:00:54 – 00:01:33 Pimolporn: In today’s episode, you will hear about how out-of-the-classroom education could empower children to create sustainable food systems for future generations. To discuss this topic, I am very thrilled to introduce our guest speaker, Mr. Alex Rendell. Alex is a successful Thai actor, an environmentalist, an environmental influencer, an UNEP ambassador, and a fantastic social entrepreneur where he’s the founder and Managing Director of Environmental Education Centre (EEC) Thailand. Alex also believes that love for the environment begins at a very young age. Welcome Alex, how are you? 00:01:34 – 00:01:37 Alex: Hello! Well thank you. I’m good, very good. 00:01:38 – 00:01:50 Pimolporn: Yes, so thank you so much for joining us today so maybe we could start off. Could you share a little bit about you and how you use your voice as a public figure to amplify the messages on sustainability and environmental issues? 00:01:51 – 00:02:22 Alex: Well, I co-founded an organization as you said earlier EEC Thailand in 2015. But before that I’ve been working in the entertainment industry as an as an actor. I started acting since I was seven, but actually I started working in the industry doing commercials since I was four, so once I started doing the environmental side of things, I then tried to bring my experiences and my status as an actor and use it to raise awareness or carry out environmental activities and that’s what I do at EEC. 00:02:23 – 00:03:00 Alex: But not only at EEC, I also work with other organizations. So by myself being an actor, having an Instagram account, having social media accounts that have a certain amount of followers, you can use these tools in a way that can help others. That was the initial thought. So I try to keep things as relatable and approachable as possible. I try to avoid messages that are very difficult to digest and very difficult for people to understand. So I’m always trying to use myself in a way that can send out messages that I feel it is important that people should know about and obviously things that I’m also quite or into in my own work. 00:03:01 – 00:03:12 Alex: So yeah, I just pretty much have a passion for the environment and as being an actor, I try to combine those two worlds and make use of it as much as I can. 00:03:13 – 00:03:27 Pimolporn: That’s excellent, I think you mentioned a little bit about the young generation and how to empower youth out of the classroom education so I’m very curious about this approach that you are doing. Can you tell us a little bit more on this? 00:03:28 – 00:03:49 Alex: As I mentioned earlier, I was an actor since I was like very young as an actor in Thailand. You’re always going to these places so I wouldn’t have been able to see in the world in that sort of way if it wasn’t because I was an actor, so I really believe in outdoor learning because I think that all those experiences that I personally have been through has really helped me today. 00:03:50 – 00:04:19 Alex: I did my Masters on youth engagement and youth empowerment as well, so learning with that I really got to understand how important it is to empower the younger generation. If you want to shape them in becoming leaders of any form of sustainability in the future and the process that it takes to achieve that is quite detailed, so those are the things that I implement into EEC and make sure it happens. 00:04:20 – 00:04:41 Alex: So I’m a big advocate of outdoor learning. I love sports. I love kids to be outdoors and especially with the generation that we have today. Social media. I mean I’ve been told they’re learning coding now in school and I mean back in my days, learning how to type was already very difficult, and now they’re learning coding! 00:04:42 – 00:05:09 Alex: So every now and again I think humans have to come back to nature because nature is what sustains our lives. So if we were to tackle the younger generation, it’ll be a way of solving the problem before … it’s preventing the problem because right now we’re in a situation where we were trying to raise awareness and tell people to try change, and that’s not very easy, especially on a national level. So I really believe in in starting with the youth and engaging them and empowering them. 00:05:10 – 00:05:39 Pimolporn: That’s great, it’s also funny when you mention about the coding. I felt like children these days they can do the coding with their eyes closed where we’re like in doubt and struggle to put in something on the Internet. When you mention about EEC Thailand, can you talk a little bit about the key activities that you have done with youth and how far you have gone in terms of contribution to improving the environment and food systems from your project? 00:05:40 – 00:05:57 Alex: Well EEC, we have quite a lot of projects going on, but mainly we have two different sides. The first side is our camps which we have marine camps and wildlife camps. So marine are snorkeling, fish identification, coral identification, that kind of area. We do scuba diving. 00:05:58 – 00:06:15 Alex: We use scuba diving as an educational tool like we’re not in a tourism organization, but we’re in education organization. And then we have the other side which is doing other projects and other collaboration projects with government organizations, non-government organizations, profit and private. 00:06:16 – 00:06:30 Alex: So we’re quite flexible, but our main idea is to educate whether it’s using media, where it is through events or on ground camps (3 days 2 nights / 4 days). And we do projects from small projects to yearly projects, so we have quite a lot. 00:06:31 – 00:06:54 Alex: But specifically for food, I’ve been fortunate enough to do … as an actor … people tend to invite me to join their projects and a lot of it has been on food. One project that comes to mind right away is learning about how food, how farming is big especially in Thailand, farming is very big, but how can we farm in a way that it’s sustainable. 00:06:55 – 00:07:31 Alex: And how food is contributing into global problems such as climate change, pollution, or biodiversity loss, like I think food is such a big thing in everyone’s lives. That specific project allowed me to explore what is actually the problem, what is going on, and I also have a friend that is running a plantbased organization, a plant-based company. So I went to his farm and I did a small piece and small Vlog on that. It was also very interesting with the perception that has changed over the years towards foods and how eating sustainably can be a big problem solver to our global issue. 00:07:32 – 00:08:10 Pimolporn: I think from what you just said, you have very clear visions on both sustainable consumption and agriculture. With that, combining with the experience that you have been working with youth which actually, youth also are considered as a consumer too, and they will provide a large impact in the future, consumption and food security. I’m just wondering, what do you think that through your project of EEC, that you have been working with youth? Do you think what is the impact? How can you contribute and influence youth to be more sustainable in terms of food consumption? 00:08:11 – 00:08:29 Alex: I think that at EEC, of course, our main idea at EEC with whatever project we do is to educate because we believe that if you feel inspired and you feel connected to nature, it means more to you therefore you understand it more and then you want to protect it more. 00:08:30 – 00:08:49 Alex: And I think that food is also another issue that that is implemented into our camps. We talk about food waste all the time. We talk about the trash that comes with packaging. Those kinds of things that we’re always discussing with our students, so I think that for me is to be able for them to actually understand or recognize that it is a problem. 00:08:50 – 00:09:04 Alex: I don’t think that if you were to tell like 100 people that you said that food is actually a big problem, I don’t think many would believe that but if you have a process, a learning process for them to to understand that, I think that’s a good start for them to actually understand that it is. 00:09:05 – 00:09:29 Alex: And I think that learning about food is also a very interesting subject because everyone can relate to like you don’t need people that love the environmental want to learn about food like my dad is actually a chef himself, so we’re completely aware how people are very into food and if we can try twist the message to sustainable food consumption, sustainable food production, then of course that will trigger change sooner or later. 00:09:30 – 00:10:10 Pimolporn: So great that we now learn that your dad is also a chef, so sometimes we can get some food from your dad. I also like when you mention about the learning process, I think like awareness is the very good first step, especially at a very young age, I think it’s more likely that it would translate into sustainable behavior later on rather than like when we focus on the adult, or like elder people. From the perspective from you that you focus a lot with the youth education, what policies are needed to enable effective environmental education and sustainable food system from your experience? 00:10:11 – 00:10:31 Alex: From my experience, I always get the question like so what in terms of policy, what do you think should change? I just think that environmental education should be implemented into schools and be as important as math and science to be one of the subjects because realistically speaking, most of us don’t need math in our lives. Everyone needs sustainability in their lives. 00:10:32 – 00:10:56 Alex: And I don’t think that is taken seriously enough like we see all these innovations. We see all these policies which promote like technologies or like I said different innovations, but we see very little when it comes to environmental education, and it could be anything. It could be food in the food that they eat at school. It could be cooking. It could be whatever it is that that promotes sustainable food consumption. 00:10:57 – 00:11:15 Alex: I just think that we as a country should work together to build that next generation of environmental-friendly lifestyle because it is part of your life, not because you have a passion for the environment. We can’t just wait for people to be passionate to make the change, but it just has to be part of us and I think it is it. It will go into that direction. 00:11:16 – 00:11:41 Alex: Wouldn’t it be great if the Thai public are next generation leaders of society, just live in environmentally and friendly lifestyle without it being such a fuss so in my perspective I just think that EE should be a subject that all schools every school like we go to all these schools every school has some sort of sustainability in them, but there’s no real policy or real emphasis on what exactly it is. 00:11:42 – 00:12:04 Alex: Education is all about getting people to survive in life, right? To do well in life and food is such a big thing that I think is so important like some of the foods that we’ve been eating which is in research later, it’s not healthy for us. We just now know that fasting is something, like all these different trends of food is changing all the time and I think that it’s still so niche. 00:12:05 – 00:12:20 Alex: I think that the government should work more with the private sector or big corporates. They have to know how to raise awareness with their marketing know-hows and their marketing values with the funding that they have. They’re born to sell. 00:12:21 – 00:12:50 Alex: So basically, we should use that in the government side of things for food consumption and food production to raise awareness and use the media that the younger generation are more familiar with, because in my generation I would be watching a 40-minute documentary while the younger kids today, they’re on TikTok. If they don’t like what they see in two seconds, they swipe away so we have to be able to understand the behavior of the younger generation and design campaigns around that behavior to get the message across as much as we can. 00:12:51 – 00:13:19 Pimolporn: I definitely agree with you when you mention about how to mainstream environmental education into like all the schools. Especially in Thailand though, because food production and consumption is playing such a big part in our economy and I think you touch a little bit up on the private sector and how they should engage on this thing where they could understand the audience quite well and how can they marketize these issues. 00:13:20 – 00:13:41 Pimolporn: Yes, I think we have a very rich discussion today and actually so many things that I really want to discuss more with you but unfortunately, we would probably have to wrap up our session today. So maybe is there anything you want to tell our listeners? Maybe some easy steps that they could take to help building the sustainable food system. 00:13:42 – 00:13:58 Alex: As I mentioned earlier, that especially in Thailand, where a country that really are dependent on the health of our environment, like if we were to go back to the SDGs, we don’t really have a hunger problem as much as other countries, maybe we do a little bit, but the reason that we don’t is because we have a healthy environment, like during the COVID lockdown those two years. 00:13:59 – 00:14:26 Alex: I did some traveling down south in terms of jobs and stuff like that and tourism, we were affected, but in terms of food we were able to feed our families because we have it a healthy environment. So if we don’t recognize that and if we don’t invest as much as we’re taking then one day this is going to end. So to all listeners, I just want to emphasize the importance of having a healthy environment for healthy foods and for healthy families in a healthy country, basically. 00:14:27 – 00:14:52 Pimolporn: That is indeed a very important point to just mention, so thank you very much Alex for joining our podcast and sharing your experience and perspectives, especially on the youth engagement. I really love and admire what you do because this is not just to conserve the environment, but it’s also help strengthen our food system and empower young generation. Keep up with all the good works and hope we could collaborate more with you in the future! 00:14:53 – 00:14:55 Alex: Thank you, thank you guys.