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.

It is not easy being a responsible consumer, or is it?

Last weekend I had a peaceful morning with the thick Sunday issue of Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest newspaper in Finland. I learned about what Finnish people are willing, and not willing, to do in their personal life to stop climate change. However, what made me write a post today was an interesting story about comparison of tomatoes. What should the environmentally and socially conscious consumer choose?

Growing tomatoes in the Finnish greenhouses during the winter season requires loads of energy and produces lots of greenhouse gases too. This is shocking news for many Finns who have used to believe that local products are always the most eco-friendly and responsible option. According to the article, if you want to be climate friendly, you should choose tomatoes produced in temperate climate like Spain. It is more energy efficient to transport the tomatoes to Finland by sea or road than to heat the greenhouses in Finland. However, questions have been raised about the working conditions of seasonal workers in many countries in Central and Southern Europe. You can find the article in Finnish here.

No doubt that we are confused in front of these questions. I think this is a good story explaining that responsible consumption is a multidimensional issue. What I would have expected in addition to comparison of fresh tomatoes is a wider point of view on the issue. If you happen to live in the cold North do you actually need fresh tomatoes year round? I don’t know if from the social point of view dried or canned tomato products are better than fresh but from climate and energy efficiency point of view it would have been nice to hear if during the winter you should favour these products instead of fresh tomatoes.

If you’d like to favour local products, seasonality is the key word. Unless you happen to live in Southern Europe this means that tomatoes and fresh veggies are enjoyed during the summer and root vegetables, apples, preserved veggies, fruits and berries chosen during the cold season.

My point is that we need to move beyond the comparisons within one product category and look at the big picture. Now that fresh tomatoes are available year round, it does not mean that the only responsible option is to choose the best tomato. Maybe it is better to choose veggies from another product category. This is what One Did It encourages you to do, think beyond mere product comparisons and question your habits a bit.

From intention to action

While writing this post I’m enjoying a smooth ride on the German railways from Wuppertal to Berlin. This has been my fifth visit to the city of Wuppertal and today has been the sunniest day I’ve ever seen there. I hardly could leave the city since everything looked so different on a sunny day. They say that Wuppertal is the rainiest city in Germany and I have no reason to doubt that.

What brought me to Germany are two conferences touching the topic of sustainable consumption and production. The first one was organised by the CSCP (The UNEP Wuppertal/Institute Collaboration Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production). For me the most inspiring message of the conference was that there are many examples like the transition towns movement showing examples on how individual people and small communities can make changes in their everyday lives without any orders from above. A slight frustration was occasionally in the air when we were discussing about pace of the change in policy making. But the positive thing is that we don’t need to wait for that. Mr. Chris Church from ANPED (The Northern Alliance for Sustainability) put it so nicely: “We already have tools and approaches to deal with climate change.” The important thing is that we need to act now. Sometimes we claim that “they” (referring to business, governments, transnational organisations, other people etc.) are not doing anything for sustainability. The participants of the conference seemed to believe – in parallel with One Did It team – that we need a positive approach and open minds to reconsider our own habits. Start with you, your family, local community and the change has already begun.

I was also reminded about the importance of networking and changing ideas. The organisers provided a market place for project ideas in the field of sustainable consumption and production. Inspiring discussions arouse while people were exploring each other’s ideas and finding potential partners for their projects. The discussions continue in the dedicated online network.

My hope really is that as lively discussion will arise between the members of the One Did It community and our team to help to develop the One Did It site even better. Another thing I wish is that the One Did It site will be the platform where ideas and inspiration to start action is found. Let’s show the world that we are not waiting orders from above. We have the knowledge and motivation to start to change our behavior today.

P.S. In Wuppertal also the FIN-MIPS Household report was released. In case you are interested to learn more about ecological backpacks of households, please download your copy here.

Onedidit.com is one of ten companies selected to present at Green:Net 09 in San Francisco!

The One did it service is one of the ten promising young companies that are using Internet to promote environmental issues to present at the upcoming Green:Net Launchpad on March 24. 2009. The organizers got overwhelming response of good candidates and One did it is proud to be the only European company that has been selected. These companies are innovators who are developing software, wireless networks, consumer electronics, and web tools to reduce energy consumption or boost clean power.

The First Green Conference for the Internet Technology Industry is being presented by Earth2tech and GigaOM and will feature an amazing line up of speakers from i.e. Microsoft, Dell, IBM, Cisco Systems, Google, Yahoo and 3Com.

One did it team is preparing the new launch in a few weeks and eager to present even more features that we already had to get selected!

Future planning at team trip to Germany, Wuppertal

The onedidit.com ecological backpack test is based on calculations that use the material intensity data provided by i.e. the Wuppertal Institute in Germany. One did it team decided to travel to meet people in Wuppertal Institute and also UNEP/Wuppertal Institute Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP).

The journey started from Helsinki-Vantaa airport at 5.30 am. in anticipating atmosphere, a few of us have slight fear of flying. We flew to Dusseldorf and took the train to Wuppertal straight to a meeting. The day was successful, One did it team got introduced and got more comprehensive view of Wuppertal Institute’s area of operation. We also discussed about the launch of the German version of the onedidit.com site by the summer 2009 and some other acts of collaborating.

The next day after refreshing night activities and delicious Turkish dinner, the team started a whole day internal workshop about next steps concerning the service itself. As the first version was launched at the end of the year 2008, we have already some great feedback from users. The near future plans are very clear, there will be eco-tips called Do’s for user to reduce their ecological backpack calculated with the test. This feature has been accepted by the Beta-version users and it has been developed further to provide better user experience. Among this launch there will be anticipated friend invite feature, a must function to compare and challenge friends to take the test to calculate their own eco-backpack.

One of the major outcomes of the workshop was to continue the planning of the Facebook application immediately. There has been an application launched with the Beta-version, but it never reached the actual users. The role of the applications generally in Facebook has changed decisively from the first version of One did it application, some changes to the approach have been made and the application should be in test among volunteer One did it Facebook group members during this spring.

It is also evident that the German version of the site will be launched right after the English release that includes the eco-tips and friend features. Time frame to that is April-June 2009. The workshop summarized a few more broad-minded plans for the second half of the year 2009 but the final path of future development depends much on user feedback that we hopefully get loads of.

On the last day there was a meeting with CSCP, which supports usage of creative tools in sustainability communication. Since the concept of One did it is both informational and entertaining there could be possibilities to work together to promote the theme of sustainability. This could be done i.e. with the means of photography or writing or some other user provided content on onedidit.com service.

The trip was a great way to get out of the office, sit together in the same table, have good conversation about the state of the service, make future decisions and meet people from collaborating instances while having a great time. Hope the near release reflects the productive times we had!