| 02 Sep 2025
Development of GreenDealz: A public engagement toolkit addressing critical raw materials and the EU Green Deal at informal education settings
Abstract. One of the most important challenges that Europe faces to date is the need for a sharp increase in the extraction, production and recycling of critical raw materials to meet the demands of renewable energy technologies as specified in the European Union’s (EU) climate targets. However, this topic is not widely discussed amongst publics and is underrepresented within the field of informal public engagement. We present the development of a public engagement toolkit called ‘GreenDealz’ that addresses this gap. We focus specifically on informal learning within the festival environment. GreenDealz was created via an iterative process informed by festival-based data collection and audience input. GreenDealz engages incidental audiences with a supermarket experience, where critical raw materials must be shopped for to build key renewable energy technologies and achieve EU climate goals. Evaluation is streamlined into the tactile experience of GreenDealz, employing embedded assessment measures which yield quantitative data that indicate this activity significantly enhances audience knowledge of this topic.
General Comments
It is of utmost importance to our society that the public gains an understanding and knowledge of the role of CRM and its connection to achieving the goals of the Green Deal to be achieved in a variety of ways. Any activities to gain public awareness and to improve the knowledge of the society on key challenges of the society in particular are desperately needed in most societies. The paper picks this need up and provides some simple solutions that can general be easily adopted elsewhere.
The title “Development of GreenDealz: A public engagement toolkit addressing critical raw materials and the EU Green Deal at informal education settings “ indicates very clearly the content of the paper. The concept of addressing festival visitors is relatively new and has the potential to reach a very diverse and inexperienced group of people. This is particularly true given that a wide variety of different types of festivals were included in the study.
The paper is written in a complex style that is rather atypical for scientific papers. The long and convoluted sentences make it even more difficult to understand it. This distracts from the actual message.
The paper seems to address the most of the aspects that need to be considered. A clear description of the method used, the statistical approach and the concept for achieving the overall objective is only available in broad terms.
The paper aims to stimulate thinking about CRM in relation to the EU Green Deal. Therefor it focuses on the tools to gain this stimulation rather than the description on the scientific content used for the stimulation, which could be reviewed by the RC. The study seems to be designed rather as a subordinated experiment in a context of a scientific project than as a stand-alone study. It provides a snap-shot of given festival situations, not tailormade solutions as the many researchers in the topic suggest. The authors fail to explain the selection criteria for the festivals to the reader. A more detailed and structured elaboration would improve the readability of the text. Thus, it could be better structured.
The authors discuss their findings in the context of existing research and made an effort to consider transdisciplinary findings as well. The data compiled to obtain the results are not always provided in a comprehensible manner. The methods used are not clearly described in terms of inclusion/exclusion criteria, procedures or tests used, measurements utilized, primary and secondary outcomes or independent and dependent variables, statistical analysis utilized.
The article does not test any hypotheses, but rather describes the development of a tool for knowledge transfer and discusses random examples from experience. In this context, it is an interesting opinion piece that encourages further testing and experimentation elsewhere. However, there is no solid evidence that the proposed GreenDealz toolbox actually enhanced the publics’ engagement in comparison with other approaches or at all. Yet, the article is a useful source of inspiration for those that view communication with lay audiences as part of their responsibilities. Some revisions required prior publication.
Specific comments
In the introduction (session 1.3) state three objectives of the toolkit without setting a hypothesis of the overarching goal against which the findings need to be tested. A clear general statement on how to structure the experiment, what are the goal of each step, against which parameter the experiments are tested at each of the iterative steps – what has led to stimulate the adjustments – are not very well described. Hence, it seems to be a random process rather than a full controlled experiment.
Unfortunately, the number of participants in all experimental setups is very low, so it must be assumed that the experimental setup is not very attractive in comparison to other festival events. The statistical relevance of the test results is very low and corresponds more to a non-representative sample. The results derived from the experiments are therefore only of limited reliability. However, the idea and set-up are of relevance and worth to be developed further.
Although some of the information is provided in the text, it is difficult for the reader to compare the different points. The paper would benefit when key figures provided somewhere in the text would be summarised in a tabular overview of the various parameters of the festivals, such as number of participants, social structure and duration of the experiment, would have been helpful as well as description of the elements of the GreenDealz tool and when what part is suitable. Parts such as aspects of the objectives and the experimental setup are scattered throughout the text, while the framework is described inadequately.
The statistical results are based on various statistical methods without any explanation as to why these different methods had to be used. The stated methods should does not allow another researcher to precisely reproduce the study. The authors point to the low statistical significance but nevertheless draw conclusions about the transferability to other social groups and the applicability of the tool. Based on the available data, this generalisation does not appear to be valid. However, it can still serve as a basis for further studies and experiments. The description of the experimental setup allows replicated by another researcher. The low response to the experiment at all events indicates that the attractiveness of the experimental design still needs to be refined. As outlined by Ford (2019) points out that "tailored content and experiences can resonate with a person at an emotional and intellectual level, they will ultimately become devoted to the" issue.
Technical corrections
Some of the references are unusually cited in the text, in particular those that are taken from websites (e.g. lines 527-528; 546 and 559). The reference list contains errors, including incomplete and unusual quoting’s (e.g. websites) as well as incorrect listed authors that seem not to be in line with common format requirements. If all important relevant references are included the list of cannot be judged by the RC. Thus, the cited ones are accurately quoted with in the limitations mentioned, e.g.:
Some minor typos have been detected such as in line 28 and 32 “Parliament” and in line 831 https://periodic-taEnble.com/dysprosium/.
Figures and tables missing some descriptions such as N/A in tab 1 (inconsistent with n/a tab 3), Fig 2 label of age range (I assume).
Some descriptions are sloppy such as “pure image” instead of image of “pure metal” or “chemical element” (e.g. Fig. A1)
Some further comments are provided in the draft text.