Do small things matter?

Every now and then the potential of small everyday pro-environment choices and actions are questioned. People claim that if we only do small things we’ll only achieve small changes. The importance of high level agreements to cut emissions is of course crucial. Similarly no one can question the need for regulations for more sustainable buildings, energy production, transport systems and city planning.

However, we might feel powerless in front of the huge environmental challenges we face and get frustrated about the slow pace of change in the high level decision making. But our everyday life matters too. Food, mobility, housing and energy use at home make up the majority of the weight our personal eco-backpacks. Why wouldn’t we take control over our choices in our everyday life? We can start right away to make improvements. Take a walk or ride your bike, cut some off the meat every now and then, and turn down the thermostat. These are easy, quick and inexpensive ways to make a difference.

The opponents of green consumption have a point criticising the potential of green products. It is true that if we buy more just because it is greener we are fooling ourselves and green washing our own life. But when it comes to renewable energy for instance we have a green product to go for. Most of us would still like to heat our homes and run computers, right?

Behaviour change is what we need. We believe that small is better than nothing but it is true that also huge changes can be made in personal life if we look at food, mobility and housing. Cutting down kilometres and questioning the need for bigger homes are definitely big changes and the ones we urgently need for. The good news is that by taking these decisions we are adopting overall pro-environmental practices, not just tackling one single issue like reducing air pollution for instance.

Making individual and informed choices does not mean you have to manage it all alone. There is something between individual choices and high level decision making, communities. It gives you much more confident and powerful feeling when you find other people doing their bit too. The supporting community can be consist of your real life friends, neighbours or people you around the world you know through the online communities. Have you already challenged your friends to take some of the One did it eco-actions?

Do you know what is in your ecological backpack?

What a great spring weather we had in Helsinki during last weekend! People enjoyed the sunny days outdoors and many also decided to stop by at the Recycling Factory.


Reuse, sustainable and ethical consumption were the key topics at the Recycling Factory. The two-day event included exhibitions, seminars, workshops and a market place. We introduced our newly released Finnish version of the One Did It website.
It was so nice to hear that visitors found our website useful and that they liked the design. When we talked about the ecological backpack test, some of the visitors would have liked to include more detailed information; some found it difficult to make estimation for all the issues included in the test. The challenge is that we are actually not always aware about the details of our daily practices like how many kilometres we travel by car or bus or what is the heating system in our home. For the One Did It team the challenge is to design an application that helps each and every one of us to easily measure our ecological backpack without a special knowledge. To help us in this task feedback from all of you is extremely valuable.
I started to think why it is so challenging for us to describe the very basic features of our everyday life. We might take things so much for granted that we don’t even know from which source the heat comes. Every day we take the bus or tram but actually, do we have any idea about how many kilometres we move around. And so what, does it even make any sense to know? In my opinion, if we don’t realize how we heat our homes or how much we travel, how could we have an idea about what kind of burden on the environment our lifestyle makes?

There is this saying, what you can’t measure you can’t manage. If you’d like to make your lifestyle a little more eco-friendly, the best way is to first find out where you stand now and identify the most significant issues. We are keen to know where and how our everyday food is produced, is it good for our health and how sustainable it is from the environmental point of view. Similarly we should pay attention about the details of housing, energy use and our mobility patterns. If we do that then we are well aware of the three high impact household consumption areas: Food, mobility and housing.