Sustainable development, or I would say, ecological living from the perspective of an individual, can be divided into four categories, if my memory serves me right:
1) travel & transportation
2) housing & heating
3) general consumption
4) food
I got this division from www.myfootprint.org, where I completed the Ecological Footprint quiz. The result was pretty much the average European's, 2,92 globes.
In today's Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, professor Atte Korhola, who works as the professor of Environmental Change, has his ecological footprint measured (section Science/Travel/Technology/Car, page 22), and he commented on the result. He travels extensively because of his international work, but he says in the past years the air travel has been made too demonic: using the internet causes as much emissions, and constant use of car is more harmful to the environment that an occasional trip to Thailand. He stated that air travel causes only 3% of the greenhouse emissions, and according to studies, flying also has impact of cooling the atmosphere down! I like that, because I love to travel, and I would travel by air much more if I could afford it.
Here are my suggestions and challenges for other iVETian to Save the World, according to some of the above-mentioned categories:
TRAVEL
1) Use your bike or walk if you travel less than 5 km. Carpool or use public transportation for longer trips. (Ok, not very original ideas, but I want to challenge on each point.) Or, join EasyTrip Finland http://www.easytrip.fi and
http://www.facebook.com/groups/easytrip/
This is a carpooling application on Social Media (and it may require an invitation, but let me know, I can invite you). An acquaintance of mine has launched this site.
2) When travelling, couch-surf or stay with your friends as much as you can. Also generously offer your friends a place to stay. I mostly do this and very rarely stay in hotels.
FOOD
3) Cook home-made meals and offer meals and coffee etc. to your friends and family rather than going out to a restaurant or café. Watch MasterChef for some great ideas and recipes. I used to go out to eat on Sundays, but these days I mostly do some gourmet cooking at home on weekends. My next ventures will be pizza blanc with potato slices and panna cotta caramelised with a gas torch with apple flambé. You can donate the money you saved to charities if you really want to make a difference.
4) Try a de-tox fast for a few days by drinking only fruit juices and smoothies. Buy a juicer to make freshly squeezed juice. Our favourite is apple-carrot. Chilled orange juice is also awesome, cause the pulp and the white layer add texture to the juice. I love the juicer, because I don't have to peel or chop the fruit - I only need to wash & halve the apples and the machine takes care of the rest. Too bad that fruit is so expensive in Finland, but use whatever is affordable during the season. You can dump all the leftover salads etc. to a juicer AND it's a good way to smuggle broccoli etc. healthy stuff to juice without kids noticing.
5) Form food communities with your friends, colleagues, or people living in your flat. I don't mean those that collectively buy organic food, but this collective takes turns in cooking. There can be themes in cooking generally or differing by day, e.g. seasonal/local/organic ingredients, theme cuisines like Thai, Mexican, etc. For example, if you eat your own meals at lunch, find 4 others, and each cooks for all of you once a week. This was my new, original idea.
GOODS
6) Set up clothes potluck parties. I mean, invite a bunch of people over, and ask everyone to bring clothes, shoes, and other stuff that they don't need. Put them in display all over your house and pick whatever you like. There can also be a rule that you can take as many things as you brought. I have attended a couple of these events. I got to meet new people and I found some really nice clothes that are still in my wardrobe. This is a good alternative if booking a table in a second-hand shop is too time-consuming and if you don't want to take the clothes to a charity without compensation.
GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY
7) With your colleagues or friends, start sponsoring a child from a country of your choice. The child get a chance to going to school, getting an education and then supporting his or her family. There are a lot of organizations who are involved, e.g.
http://www.fidainternational.fi/development-relief/child-sponsorship/
http://www.plan.fi/en-GB/frontpage/activities/sponsor-a-child/
http://www.worldvision.org
Have you tried any of these? What do you think?
Great ideas what an individual can do!
VastaaPoistaI'm member of Servas Finland. It is a great way to become international in your own home.
I like your lunch idea! Only that I eat in the canteen, it's so cheap and you get fresh salad too. But we like cooking almost all our food from scratch (I do buy things like chopped tomatoes though). We bake our bread, and try to use leivinuuni instead of oven. And I do buy ready baby food and spinach soup sometimes. We grow some vegs and berries in our garden. And we try to eat more Finnish berries than imported fruits. But still we usually have organic bananas and mandarines at home.
I donated to Unesco for years. I stopped last Christmas since we need every penny at home. But I will start again once I go back to work. I'm thinking of donating to Plan. I give most of our kid's clothes to my friends who have smaller kids. Sometimes I donate some clothes to Russia.
We are living quite far from everything and there is only one bus running to town in the morning and one back in the afternoon. Not a real alternative! But I would be more than happy to share a car with someone else.