A playful, illustrated book of 52 weekly eco-challenges that reconnects citizens with their city and nature, inspiring a greener, more sustainable urban lifestyle through creativity, curiosity, and community action.
Define the problem/need you are solving or addressing with your project. How does it address the Open Call criteria, such as environmental impact, social engagement, circularity, user experience, resource efficiency, and community-driven solutions?
Urban life can alienate citizens from both their natural surroundings and from simple, meaningful actions that support sustainability. The Green Book of Plovdiv responds by blending storytelling and gamified learning into a joyful exploration of eco-living. Through 52 weekly challenges—from walking shelter dogs to identifying trees from your window or walking barefoot in the grass—the book offers an inclusive, low-barrier way to inspire behavioral change. It promotes circularity, low-impact habits, and strong community connections through collaborative actions. The project’s design, tone, and content are geared to be playful yet impactful, encouraging engagement from families, individuals, educators, and companies with ESG goals. By creating shared, small-scale actions embedded in the local context, the project fosters collective ecological literacy and community empowerment. It aligns with the competition’s focus on awareness, outreach, and educational design that inspires long-term change and regenerative thinking.
Please describe your project, reflecting on the concept, inspiration, materials, technical aspects, methods and process(es).
The Green Book of Plovdiv is a creative toolkit for environmental awareness rooted in place, emotion, and action. Designed as a pocket book publication, it offers 52 illustrated challenges—one for each week of the year—that gently nudge citizens to explore nature in the city, reduce their footprint, and practice mindful living. Inspired by Plovdiv’s layered landscape and slow city vibe, each challenge is crafted as a micro-story, such as decoding a tree’s life through its rings or giving a flower to your neighborhood florist. All text is handwritten, and the visuals are fully illustrated in-house by Studio PUNKT (www.punkt.studio), creating a tactile, personal, and collectible object. It’s printed locally using eco-conscious materials, with attention to minimizing waste. The process included co-creation with local museums, educators, and environmentalists, and its modular structure allows for replication in other cities. It’s equal parts game, guidebook, and movement.
What do you think makes your project innovative compared to the existing efforts and ideas in the field it addresses?
The Green Book of Plovdiv breaks new ground by reframing environmental education as an emotional, playful, and creative experience rooted in the rhythms of everyday life. Unlike many awareness campaigns that rely on data or didactic messaging, this project uses visual storytelling, tactility, and poetic micro-actions to engage people on a human level. Its innovation lies in format (a beautifully illustrated book-game), accessibility (easy-to-do activities for all ages), and tone (friendly, humorous, hopeful). It reimagines sustainability not as sacrifice but as joy, community, and connection to place. Challenges like identifying urban animals, crafting a wreath from wild herbs, or barefoot walking on grass create moments of delight and self-reflection. The project bridges education, activism, and design with a regenerative mindset—inviting people not just to learn, but to feel and live their way into greener futures. It’s both a product and a process of transformation.
Does it impact or reflect young people need(s) and how?
Definitely—The Green Book of Plovdiv speaks directly to young people’s desire for agency, connection, and hopeful futures. Designed to appeal across generations, it’s particularly powerful for youth as it provides hands-on, self-directed challenges that are simple, fun, and meaningful. Whether completed solo, with friends, family members, or in school settings, the book invites exploration, creativity, and mindfulness. It fosters eco-literacy through lived experience—identifying trees, exploring barefoot, crafting from leaves—while also encouraging social engagement, such as walking dogs from the local shelter or gifting a flower to a stranger. Its visual and game-like structure meets youth where they are: curious, overstimulated, and often looking for grounding and purpose. It’s also adaptable for classrooms, making it a flexible tool for educators. Most importantly, it centers a message of hope and belonging: that young people are already part of the solution, and their everyday actions matter.
