Break the routine

We love the holiday season don’t we? Especially the possibility to break routines is great. You know spend time and effort on things we really love to do. The change in routines can be either positive or negative from the environmental perspective but that is not the main point here. Important is that during holiday we have time and energy to question some the locked-in habits of our everyday life.

It would be great to see the routine breaking mindset more often out of the holiday season too. When following discussions about sustainable lifestyles and practices there is no debate without comments like “sounds like a good idea but in Normal life of Normal people it is impossible”. I bet there are definitely normal people telling their stories about slow travel, bicycle commuting, reusable nappies and vegetarian (or even vegan)cooking to take a few examples.

Even if we are not ready to turn our whole life upside down at once we can find some of the issues so inspiring that we decide to break our routine and take a try. We all are familiar with the feeling that we want to do something better or differently. It is much easier to break the habit if we have some concrete advice to start with. Small changes don’t need to be complicated we just need the holiday type of mindset to make the (pro-environment) change. Let’s hold on to the open-minded attitude while we are back to our desks and everyday life.

The travel paradox

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.

Enjoy green vacation on summer residence

On vacation it is recommended to relax and get out of daily routines but you might still make eco-friendly choices while chilling. If you have summer cottage or planning to rent one, here are some great tips you can take into consideration.

The first move is to think about how you transport vacationers from home base to the point of relaxation. It is always recommendable to use bus or train instead of personal car, sometimes routes to isolated cottages are out of reach of public transport. When renting a summer residence, you can choose location near your home or from area that can be reached by public transport. If you can’t choose location and transportation requires personal car, you can drive outside big traffic jams, and save some fuel and be much less frustrated. Try to get everybody into one car, with every seat taken; environmental pressure is divided among several passengers.

Take a new look at heating this summer and try to substitute at least some of resources with ecological ones. If you use electricity, check your electricity supplier and make sure you use electricity that is produced with wind power or other eco-labeled resource. Try to find some waste or residue fuel wood instead of primary wood and turn electricity off for a while. The heating issue is even more important during the cold season. Even if the cottage is not used, some people prefer to keep the temperature above the outside temperature. It is worth considering if the heating is really needed during the winter, it can be quit costly too.

One Did It registered users can use extended ecological backpack test to add several energy sources in secondary residence. Just take the test again after registering and you’ll see extended sections highlighted.

To keep room temperature nice and warm, check visible insulation every year, the mice and birds might have taken something to their own purposes during low maintenance time. When sealing up cracks in the cottage, keep an eye out for spider webs. Spiders like to weave them in the path of airflow to catch insects.

If you need to renovate, do it with recycled materials. Using recycled materials is a great way to save money and avoid wastage. It is important to take measurements of the things that you need before you start going out to buy materials. Visit around local recycling centers, buy-sell& trade -places, garage sales, demolition places and even local dump. Make it like an adventure and meet local people. Getting to know the people who deal with recycled materials can aid you, as many of them can give you tips on where you can find materials that you need.

Maybe the biggest influence you can do is getting to know local people and neighbors when you need builders, remodelers and developers and buy locally harvested and manufactured materials and groceries. Consider what types of resources have a local industry and make sure that your products actually come from there. And think about what veggies and herbs you can grow in your own garden. Remember to collect rainwater to water your plants. You can spread out the word with neighbors about local work and utilities, change good tips and influence consumption habits in a bigger scale than your own yard.

After you have read all this you might end up thinking how much work your own cottage requires. Renting a cottage is not a bad idea at all and it is ecological too. One Did It registered users can use extended ecological backpack test to fill the whole amount of people using the secondary residence with you.

We have gathered a few links for further reading on Finnish, and we would be interested if our readers would share similar liks to us and other readers.

Further reading in Finnish:

Report about the environmental impacts from electricity use in summerhouses and possibilities to reduce electricity use through the means of alternative heating systems. (PDF)

Tourism MIPS – Consumption of natural resources of tourism (PDF)

Sustainability in leisure time housing (Website)

Summerhousing as a lifestyle (PDF)

Should we go to summer cottage? (PDF)

Did it in Helsinki – experiences of a stay at home holiday

About two weeks ago I was attending an interesting seminar organised by the Finnish Environment Institute about the preliminary results of the ENVIMAT research project concentrating on environmental impacts of material flows in the Finnish economy. The program was interesting and I was feeling light since I knew that the next Monday I would start my one week autumn holiday. While focusing on the last presentation I got an SMS from my spouse. “My passport is still stuck at the embassy because of the visa application. Seems like we can’t travel anywhere next week”.

Last time we had holiday, we took a trip through parts of Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. I must admit that travelling is one of my passions and I take every chance to travel to faraway places. I’m not sure if that is anything to proud of these days, but still. Well, to get back to the point, this time we had planned to take a short trip from Helsinki to Tallinn. I was feeling good about our choice to this time only take a short boat trip over the Gulf of Finland, no long haul flights or extensive road trips needed. But after receiving the SMS I was disappointed, no travelling at all? What can you do with a stay at home holiday?

At the end of the week I was glad how things turned out. I had enjoyed a slow paced delicious breakfast at the Cafe Ekberg (I must admit that I couldn’t strictly stick to the vegan diet...), wandered around a park covered with yellow and red autumn leaves, walked along some narrow streets in Kaivopuisto with fancy embassy buildings next to the sidewalks. One evening, I was glad I didn’t have to feel guilty about having a Nepalese meal without being in Kathmandu. When travelling abroad I consider it almost a crime to skip the local dishes but since I was at home I could eat whatever I wanted! Another night I had a chance to listen one of my favourite artists Jukka Poika singing his stories about the down to earth life in reggae style. It’s not that often you can enjoy listening to him on the beaches of Thailand.

When travelling abroad I always spend some time shopping, now that I knew all the same shopping facilities are available when actually needed I chose do something else instead. It might sound naive but it is true that instead of shopping I spend some time in the library, museum, enjoying live music and helping a friend with her garden work. Last but not least I went to check the cows grazing on the fields of the agricultural department of the Helsinki University. I was laughing at myself since apparently I had to move to the capital city of Finland before I actually had a chance to get so close with those lovely creatures.

In addition to the fact that I had cycled more than 200 kilometres around Helsinki during my week off, I was very much surprised how relaxing time I had. I won’t make a promise not to ever again to make a long haul trip but what I learned is that spending a holiday at home eases the pressure to do too many things during your days off. Last time I needed few days to actually recover from our holiday trip before getting back to work! This time it was easy to take it slow with the activities, if I won’t have the time to visit the National museum today I can (in theory at least) do it next weekend.