Dalton Park is almost ready to unveil the Christmas season, but it needs a little help from shoppers.

This Saturday marks the start of the holiday for the center, and it begins with the arrival of Santa. He and his team of real reindeer with touch in early in the day, and then he’ll parade through the center to meet all the good little girls and boys. Afterward, they’ll be able to visit the reindeer in their pen while Santa settles into his grotto.

As the afternoon progresses, the center will put its tree-lighting plans into action. Here’s where shoppers will need to kick in: the special Christmas tree is decorated with LED baubles and powered by a walkway that picks up energy from shoppers’ footsteps. They’ll need to take some festive footsteps to ‘Spark-the-Park’ and generate enough power to light the tree, officially launching Dalton Park’s Christmas.

After the lights are switched on, the big day wraps up with a fabulous firework finale.

Literacy is vitally important, informing every part of our lives. But in a world increasingly defined by climate change, there is a new sort of literacy that’s becoming nearly as fundamental: carbon literacy. The Manchester Carbon Literacy Project seeks to bring that understanding to everyone that works, lives or studies in the city over the next three years. It sounds like an uphill battle, but most of the important ones are.

Manchester Arndale is doing its part to participate in the project, which is a cornerstone of Manchester: A Certain Future, the city’s climate change action plan. The initiative launched at the shopping center earlier this week, celebrating 24 of the first “green graduates” who can now go out and share their carbon literacy with the world. This first cohort gathered at the center to toss their green mortar-boards high in the air.

The ceremony was attended by Sir Richard Leese, Leader of Manchester City Council, and Professor John Brooks, Vice Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University. Said Leese, “People taking part in today’s event work for a wide range of organisations, demonstrating how this issue affects everyone. Their task is to pass on knowledge about climate change to their peers. There is a real prospect that Manchester could become the world’s first carbon literate city and for the city to be a far better place as a result.”

When Leese says that graduates’ task is to pass on their knowledge, he’s not overstating the issue. The most important, and most interesting, part of the project is that it’s not being taught by experts but Mancunians themselves. Participants are shown how the small changes they can make affect the environment and their lives, and they take that knowledge and pass it on to others, peer-to-peer.

Aside from holding the launch event, Manchester Arndale is committed to the project. It’s one of the pioneer employers training all its staff in Manchester Carbon Literacy. Centre director David Allinson said “Manchester Arndale is one of the largest employment hubs in the city centre with around 10,000 people working here. As the UK’s largest inner-city shopping centre, we have a significant impact on our local environment and are committed to reducing this.”

“As centre director, I am leading by example and going through the Manchester Carbon Literacy training programme with a view to encouraging all our staff to follow suit in the new year. This free training will help provide a greater awareness of the environmental issues we face and how we can reduce our carbon footprint going forward.”

Bayfair Shopping Centre has made some outstanding improvements with its green initiatives. After surveying shoppers about their environmental concerns, the center found that 42% of New Zealanders view climate change as something that needs to be addressed immediately. Large businesses in particular are called to task to address their costs to the environment.

Bayfair has stepped up to the plate, reimagining its public restrooms for a sustainable future. This means pre-plumbing for grey water harvesting tanks. It also means solar panels that provide heat for the water, and LED lighting. Te center has tweaked nearly every part of the washrooms, with new air conditioning systems, water-saving tap sensors, recycling bins and more efficient hand dryers.

But the really cool part of Bayfair’s plan is the accountability it’s built into the whole system. Display screens show the water and power savings in real time, hopefully inspiring shoppers to take their own sustainable measures at home.

We can also see the results. The center has its monitoring shared online, showing every part of the heating system and its savings. So far, those include enough energy to make 52,000 pieces of toast, or drive a car 936 kilometers. And that’s in just a few weeks.

Bayfair’s Centre Manager Steve Ellingford is proud of what his center has achieved.

“Bayfair is excited to roll out these contemporary upgrades, which are market-leading initiatives and one of a kind for a shopping centre,” he said. “The new facilities reflect not just the community’s conservation focus, but also their love of the coast itself, which these new facilities are surrounded by and geared towards protecting.”

A bit of good news out of Erin Mills Town Centre: its green efforts have been recognized by the Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada (BOMA).

The center recently won the BOMA Canada’s National Earth Award in the shopping center category. The award recognizes excellence in resource preservation and environmentally sound commercial building management. The center also picked up the regional award for Ottawa on its way to the nationals.

The center was recognized for its hard work in improving its ecological footprint. Some of the steps it has taken include improvements for indoor air quality, green cleaning, and recycling programs. It’s also worked to reduce its environmental risk, to implement a green purchasing policy and improve tenant communications and education. To qualify, the center also needed to possess BOMA BESt certification.

“We are committed to responding to environmental issues that are becoming increasingly important to consumers,” said Nance MacDonald, vice president at Erin Mills Town Centre.” We are delighted to have our efforts recognized with this prestigious award.”

If there’s one key to a greener future, it’s creativity. Just the thing The Octagon Shopping Centre is looking to fan in car-savvy youngsters this week. As part of the lead-up to its car dealership weekend, the center has asked all young and creative future inventors to design the car of the future. With flying cars looking more and more retro-futurist every day, the center hopes to see some environmental magic: cars that run purely on the power of the sun, cars that are powered by their very own windmills, and, okay, maybe a few flying cars to boot.

Any forward-thinking designers aged 11 and under can enter their original and imaginative ideas by drawing them and dropping them off in the center’s post box this weekend. While they’re in the center, they can take in some cars of the much nearer future: the Volkswagen Up, and new models of the Citreon DS3, the Hyundai I10, the Ford Fiesta Zetec S and the Kia Cee’d.

Once the judges get a good look at the big ideas, the cleverest inventor will win a huge pack of exciting prizes from participants in the car show, including a Citreon coloring book, a Volkswagen campervan moneybooks and a pile of car-themed books to read.

“I cannot wait to see all the ingenious entries from our young shoppers,” said center manager Peter Hardingham. “The design a car for the future competition is going to be a lot of fun for applicants and judges.”