Travelling is my passion and this is something I spend time thinking especially during the holiday season. I cut down my energy use, stick mainly to vegetarian and vegan diet and use bicycle to move around but when it’s about travelling I take a cheap flight to head to a far away destination every now and then (and complain about the poor energy efficiency and recycling facilities at the destination...). I hear these stories a lot. One of my friends even said that she moves around either by bike or takes a flight. This is true for many of my peers in their twenties or thirties. Cheap flights allow us to travel huge distances fast and at low cost.
Travelling contributes to your social status. You know the stories about how someone travelled to a place where no other traveller has ever been to. After that you may think your wonderful three day trip to the neighbouring town is not worth mentioning about. But should it be this way?
Travel also adds to our environmental burden. One long haul return flight may generate more greenhouse gas emissions than an average person in some developing country generates in five years or so. But it is not only about long haul travel. If you spend several hours in your car every weekend to travel away from home you will notice that on your ecological backpack too.
Many of us are passionate about travelling, what can we do then to make it more of an experience and less an environmental problem? The oh so trendy slow movement has introduced the concept of slow travel. That is a loose bundle of thoughts about how to get involved with real pace of the society you are staying at. Spending time and getting to know more than the hot spots. Sounds good? While I have been trying to figure out how to combine the passion to travel and explore without adding too much weight on my eco-backpack I came to the following simple guidelines I try to stick with:
- For short breaks, from one day to few weeks, explore places where it is reasonable to travel by bike, train or bus.
- Since I’m probably not voluntarily willing to give up long haul travel, I’d at
least love to take more time once on the road and travel less often. I hope I have
learned the patience to arrange enough time for a long trip when I decide to make one.
This summer I’m going to spend all of my summer holiday it in Finland. It will be some hiking in Lapland and exploring Helsinki and surroundings. I look forward to it all! I’ll get back to you about my first Finnish holiday experience at the end of this summer.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Skip the useless stuff, say no to freebies
Haven’t we laughed at the “free gifts” you are supposed to get when ordering something from the TV-shop. Bundle of useless products are told to offer value for your money. Really?
All sorts of gifts are also mentioned when you get a call from an enthusiastic salesperson. While listening you wonder if he is selling you the magazine or all the cosmetics, jewellery and stuff. If the gift is very stylish and you think the magazine is ok maybe you decide to make the subscription. At least you get the nice designer handbag if the magazine is no good.
Even if I try to be very conscious and say no thanks for gifts I honestly don’t need, it is not always easy. For instance when buying some cosmetics it is difficult to say no for samples you think are useful, well at least useful in a sense that cosmetic samples can be.
The freebies question was recently brought up by one of my friends in Facebook. She wrote on status update that she got some goodies from a bakery for free and raised the question why we are so happy about the things we get for free. While we are trying to figure out rational reasons for this very primitive behaviour the marketing agencies take a full advantage of all this. If the samples, gifts and freebies wouldn’t encourage us to buy more, there would be none of them available.
Basically there are two points why the rational person in me is irritated by the gifts. The first thing you come across when you are about to move and need to pack all your stuff. Many of those lovely gifts you find from the bottom of baskets and the back end of the closets, right behind a jacket you haven’t used for five years. You wonder why on earth you have accepted to take all this stuff even if you knew from the beginning that you would never make use of it. The next destination of all this stuff will be the recycling centre where customers wonder who in the first place decided to have an item like that. At some point, the lovely gifts will end at the landfill or incineration plant.
The second point is that even if the gift is ok, is the product itself something you’d really need? A good question to ask oneself is if you’d skip the gift, would you still buy the product?
My strategy is to let the salesperson to know that I don’t want the gift; I’m only interested about the real product. This also works on the other way round; if the original product is very poor you can say that the freebie doesn’t make it better. What is your strategy?
All sorts of gifts are also mentioned when you get a call from an enthusiastic salesperson. While listening you wonder if he is selling you the magazine or all the cosmetics, jewellery and stuff. If the gift is very stylish and you think the magazine is ok maybe you decide to make the subscription. At least you get the nice designer handbag if the magazine is no good.
Even if I try to be very conscious and say no thanks for gifts I honestly don’t need, it is not always easy. For instance when buying some cosmetics it is difficult to say no for samples you think are useful, well at least useful in a sense that cosmetic samples can be.
The freebies question was recently brought up by one of my friends in Facebook. She wrote on status update that she got some goodies from a bakery for free and raised the question why we are so happy about the things we get for free. While we are trying to figure out rational reasons for this very primitive behaviour the marketing agencies take a full advantage of all this. If the samples, gifts and freebies wouldn’t encourage us to buy more, there would be none of them available.
Basically there are two points why the rational person in me is irritated by the gifts. The first thing you come across when you are about to move and need to pack all your stuff. Many of those lovely gifts you find from the bottom of baskets and the back end of the closets, right behind a jacket you haven’t used for five years. You wonder why on earth you have accepted to take all this stuff even if you knew from the beginning that you would never make use of it. The next destination of all this stuff will be the recycling centre where customers wonder who in the first place decided to have an item like that. At some point, the lovely gifts will end at the landfill or incineration plant.
The second point is that even if the gift is ok, is the product itself something you’d really need? A good question to ask oneself is if you’d skip the gift, would you still buy the product?
My strategy is to let the salesperson to know that I don’t want the gift; I’m only interested about the real product. This also works on the other way round; if the original product is very poor you can say that the freebie doesn’t make it better. What is your strategy?
Monday, June 8, 2009
Challenge Europe – taking part on work of the Finnish climate advocate team
The new Finnish climate advocate team has been chosen for the Challenge Europe project and I'm one of the lucky team members. The project of the British Council brings together young professionals around Europe to work on ideas and actions to promote low carbon future.
The first meeting of the new team was absolutely great. The team consists of 15 young professionals with various backgrounds from marketing and communication to energy, meteorology and architecture. Before we started our first exercise to quickly come up with our future visions of low carbon communities and practices Tuuli Kaskinen from Demos Helsinki gave us an inspiring presentation about how drastically we need to change the course and cut down the carbon emissions. We were glad to have the documentaries John Webster joining the meeting too. He is one of the two members from the last year’s team who will support the work of our team also this year.
I got a good feeling about the project with so many active people and great support from the British Council. It is a privilege to be member of the team! The examples from last year’s projects were interesting too. For instance the team was involved with the Operaatio maa (Operation Earth) TV series presented in Finland during last winter.
Our first task is to come up with three project ideas to make an impact on the climate change debate. In September the real hands-on work starts. I look forward to an inspiring summer with great ideas to suggest when the team formally meets again after the summer holidays. The best way to come up with new ideas is to change thoughts with old and new friends, family and anyone more or less interested about the topic. So be aware, you know what will be my favourite topic this summer during the picnic lunch and evening with sauna and some barbeque.
The first meeting of the new team was absolutely great. The team consists of 15 young professionals with various backgrounds from marketing and communication to energy, meteorology and architecture. Before we started our first exercise to quickly come up with our future visions of low carbon communities and practices Tuuli Kaskinen from Demos Helsinki gave us an inspiring presentation about how drastically we need to change the course and cut down the carbon emissions. We were glad to have the documentaries John Webster joining the meeting too. He is one of the two members from the last year’s team who will support the work of our team also this year.
I got a good feeling about the project with so many active people and great support from the British Council. It is a privilege to be member of the team! The examples from last year’s projects were interesting too. For instance the team was involved with the Operaatio maa (Operation Earth) TV series presented in Finland during last winter.
Our first task is to come up with three project ideas to make an impact on the climate change debate. In September the real hands-on work starts. I look forward to an inspiring summer with great ideas to suggest when the team formally meets again after the summer holidays. The best way to come up with new ideas is to change thoughts with old and new friends, family and anyone more or less interested about the topic. So be aware, you know what will be my favourite topic this summer during the picnic lunch and evening with sauna and some barbeque.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Finish up your meal or I’m going to make you pay!
Have you recently had a buffet meal? I love them since in most cases they offer a good value for money during the lunch time especially. What makes me feel bad in buffet restaurants is that people do not only take advantage of eating as much as they can but also to take as much food on their plate as they can handle and then leave some or even most of it untouched.
Because of this I was really impressed about the news (in Finnish) about a restaurant where people are charged extra if they leave some food on their plate when they choose the buffet menu. Way to go I thought. People would need to think more carefully about how much they could actually eat. But what do the customers say? I also took a sneak peek on the discussion forum of the news and almost to fell of the chair.
The first comments set the scene: “Cheating!”, “Customers pay for and can do whatever they want with the food!” Well, this might be the truth. What can you do if a grown up people do things that are not illegal but only stupid? All the food consumed, eaten or trashed, is in any case paid by the customers.
Bad service they call it. It is true that this kind of pricing policy should be clearly indicated before the customer is charged or starts to eat. A more rewarding pricing policy would be to give some discount for people leaving with a clean plate instead of charging extra for the leftovers. I can understand, but not accept, the misery of the people told to pay for the food left on their plate after they’ve finished. I would definitely choose a restaurant with this kind of pricing policy. At least if they offer vegetarian and vegan dishes too.
The food waste issue in restaurants is interesting. I’d like to know if it is in the kitchen or in the dining hall where most of the food waste is generated. According to WRAP, in UK one third of the food bought by households is wasted, but what is the case in restaurants? I’d also like to know what customers can do to minimise waste in addition to taking a plastic box for the leftovers (not talking about the buffet meals in this case).
By the way, do you know which one is better if you want to minimise food waste, to go for a buffet meal or a la carte?
Because of this I was really impressed about the news (in Finnish) about a restaurant where people are charged extra if they leave some food on their plate when they choose the buffet menu. Way to go I thought. People would need to think more carefully about how much they could actually eat. But what do the customers say? I also took a sneak peek on the discussion forum of the news and almost to fell of the chair.
The first comments set the scene: “Cheating!”, “Customers pay for and can do whatever they want with the food!” Well, this might be the truth. What can you do if a grown up people do things that are not illegal but only stupid? All the food consumed, eaten or trashed, is in any case paid by the customers.
Bad service they call it. It is true that this kind of pricing policy should be clearly indicated before the customer is charged or starts to eat. A more rewarding pricing policy would be to give some discount for people leaving with a clean plate instead of charging extra for the leftovers. I can understand, but not accept, the misery of the people told to pay for the food left on their plate after they’ve finished. I would definitely choose a restaurant with this kind of pricing policy. At least if they offer vegetarian and vegan dishes too.
The food waste issue in restaurants is interesting. I’d like to know if it is in the kitchen or in the dining hall where most of the food waste is generated. According to WRAP, in UK one third of the food bought by households is wasted, but what is the case in restaurants? I’d also like to know what customers can do to minimise waste in addition to taking a plastic box for the leftovers (not talking about the buffet meals in this case).
By the way, do you know which one is better if you want to minimise food waste, to go for a buffet meal or a la carte?
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