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Sustainable Business Entrepreneur from Australia Visits the Academy

How can you truly effect positive, sustainable change within a community? Should we educate the youth and allow change to flow from the bottom up? Or, should we inform the business owners and allow change to happen at a corporate level and flow top down? Perhaps, we should work towards both and allow change to meet in the middle.

On Tuesday, 21 January 2014, Deane Belfield, the director of eco2sys , and his wife, Marie Belfield, came to the Energy Academy to exchange ideas with the staff and learn more about the energy transition here on Samsø. At eco2sys, Deane works to asses businesses’ sustainability and resource efficiency, while looking for opportunities for improvement. A business that can maximize the efficiency of its operations will inevitably cut costs and increase its revenue.

Marie, on the other hand, has a background in education and engaged the staff with questions and personal experiences related to raising awareness in the youth. If the youth are taught to think in terms of sustainability and efficient, economical resource development, then 20 years down the line our future businesses will have all fundamentally changed from the inside out.

After ten years of working at eco2sys, Deane and Marie have recently moved to a community in Australia that collectively values things like art, music, creativity, and cooperative renewable energy development. They hope to bring the story of Samsø and the concepts they learned at the Academy back to their home and community.

At the end of the day, they departed with smiles on their faces, ideas for community development still rattling around in their heads, and a tall stack of books from our library in their arms.

Thank you for visiting!

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