We are drowning in stuff!

I am sure most of us agree that we have too much stuff! Still we keep on buying more stuff. We buy more and have a big problem with getting rid of the old one. Some products we might use only a few times. I have three pair of shoes that I have used max 2 times!  Lets take a look at these shoes life-cycle:

First the shoes material has been produced. Most of clothing is done with oil based materials. And even if it is natural cotton, the cotton production is very resource demanding, especially in terms of water usage.  The product is manufactured and transported. Then we have big facilities for shops selling these products. These shops takes space in the urban environment, they are heated and cooled which uses energy.  People use a lot of energy to get to the shops to buy the product. The industry have even made us think this is some sort of "leisure activity" to "go shopping". Then you bring the stuff home and have to store it somewhere. We need big apartments/houses to be able to store all our stuff that we hardly ever use. And these over-sized houses need also to be heated up and cooled down. And then we in the end throw it away or hopefully recycle it which uses again lots of resources.
 
I just bumped into a great start up called Vress. They have put up a service where you can rent out your party clothes to somebody. And of course you can yourself find some clothes you want to rent from someone. So simple and clever!

In the very near future I will have my doctorals dissertation and party afterwards which requires a black dress, which I dont have. Now instead of buying one, I will rent one through this service!  I would need to calculate how much natural resources I save by doing this!

I just posted there the earlier mentioned hardly used shoes :) Go and take a look! https://www.vress.co/

And while you surf around the internet, you can also take a look at my brand new company's website:
www.sustecon.fi

Enjoy the weekend and skip the shopping! :)

Energy saving lamps in Egypt

In the name of energy efficiency EU has some years ago introduced the directive to forbid light bulbs. The alternative was the "energy saving lamps" that use significantly less energy and still gives the same output, the needed artificial light. Excellent one would think?!

Well, the problem wtih these lamps is the waste. As is well known, they become very hazardous waste when they have served their enlighting purposes till the end of their life time. They contain murcery which should definately not be put into normal garbage.

This problem is well known and in many EU countires this is, at least on paper, handled somehow. Those who sell these lamps have to accept used lamps, and send them to proper waste handling facilities. Of course there is no way to really follow up on this 100%. We dont have "Big brother" filming us in our homes and checking where we put the used lamps. I am happy we are not there yet, not even for the sake of energy efficiency!

Some weeks ago it reached my attention that in Egypt these energy saving lamps are becoming more and more common in the market. Egypt is havign a major energy crisis and need desperately to lower their electricity consumption. With daily power cuts in some places even up to 20h/day you really need to find a solution fast, both in the demand and the supply side. Egypt has followed the example of EU in this lamp issue, and in terms of energy use, it will probably have very good results.

But I am a bit terrified about the consequences a wide spread use of these  mercury containing lamps in a country where the waste handling system is not working always very well, where people are not used to separating wastes, and where the handling of hazardous waste is not fully developed.

This could serve as an example where the inroduction of new technology has not been well enough assessed, taken into account the wider context where it will be used. Cultural and social aspects should always be considered. This naturally goes for EU as well where these aspects were in my opinion not well enough considered in this specific lamp-example.

Fortunately LED lamps are entering the market fast, and the time of mercury lamps will hopefully be a short one.

What brings us quality of life in how we live?

We are in the middle of selling our house and buying something new, and this process has naturally made me think more than usual about what we want in our living environment. I have made some interesting conclusions:
1. what I want is not the same as what the mainstream seems to want (maybe not that suprising)
2. what "everybody wants" still is cheaper in the market than what "nobody wants"...doesnt make any sence really!!
3. people seem really locked up in traditional ways of thinking about living arrangements. It seems diffucult to think a bit "out of the box" and think about what is the actual need we have, and what is only us being fed the "only solution" to these needs.

So lets take a short look on these points:
1. I want a smaller place, easy to maintaine and in the center of the city. Apartment with a balcony with a great view is what I want. For our 6 persons family, I found that a 90 m2 apartment would have been more than enough. My husband did not agree with me on that one though... The less bathrooms, the better, since I am the one cleaning them mostly... Most important is location. Kids must be able to walk to their hobbys!  Almost everybody I talk with are saying "how could you fit in that apartment...you need lots of space... garden is a must...etc....

2. Considering the aspects above you would think that apartments would be way chepar than one family houses. But no, they are not!! We would get a one family house, 150 m2, for 50 ke less than  a 100 m2 apartment. More or less in the same neighbourhood. I honestly dont understand this! In my mind this only shows that people actually DO want the easy living apartment more than the house..

3. How often is the living room and the "master bedroom" in use the same time? Hardly ever! So why do we need 2 separate rooms for these purposes? Why not sleep in the living room? Or how often are the parents in their bedroom during the day when the kids would need some space? Hardly ever.. So why not give part of the master bedroom (if you must have one) to be used by the kids during the day? And storage: firstly: why do we need to store a lot of crap that we never ever use? And to the stuff we do need: does the storage really has to be in your house?? It might be cheaper to rent a separate storage than to buy an oversized house just to have storage space!

And then the garden thing: many people have both house with a garden and a summercottage/boat. So they are hardly ever in their garden during summer. This is the case also for us now. So the garden only offers work to keep it maintained, and yes, we spend maybe 8-10 nice evenins in the garden during the year. Not worth it, in my personal opionion.

It is however a good thing that my husband is also making decisions with me in this matter, otherwise we would soon be living in a 30 m2 1 room apartment :)

Here is btw a link to our house-for-sell  advertisement :) Please share!

http://kuluttaja.etuovi.com/crometapp/product/realties/common/public/search/item/item.jsp?portal=eo&list_id=14012016839560&itemcmd=move2&listSize=7&doListClickStat=true&itemgroup_id=50.1&itemgroup_id=50.7&item_id=41.2336409

The car - symbol of freedom? - symbol of wealth? - symbol of stupidity?

Nothing raises as much feelings when debating sustainable living as the car. It is funny that a piece of metal can get people to feel so much! 

On one hand we have the "green" people who are saying the car is a symbol of evilness, and the cause for all the problems in our society. In many cases these people are still using cars, with various explanations like for example:

*it would take me too long to get to work with public transport/with bike (often about 15 min longer), this time is away from me being with my kids!! (But the yoga class is not..?? And since you dont bike you have to go to the gym... which takes time.)

*we are 2 persons in the car, and the other person would anyway use the car. (Really? how can you be sure of that?? maybe the other person is thinking the same??)

*if the society would provide better public transportation/better bike roads/cheaper bus tickets/tax reductions for biking... THEN I would not use my car. (Ok, so you put your own responsibility on the shoulders of "society”. That is quite common here in Finland at least).

On the other hand we have those sworn car-users who cannot under any circumstances walk more than 20m, or wait for a bus for even 5 minutes. To back up their choices they often choose to calculate the cost savings by using only the running costs of the car. There should not be any parking fees in the city centre since parking is considered a "civil right" or something. 

*All the shops in the centre will have to close if you have parking fees... since nobody would come there anymore...

*This hits the poor people the most... 

This list could go on and on, but it makes me too depressed so I will stop it here.

There are research showing that car free zones lead to MORE business. People actually like to stroll around without all the cars around them. But in political arguments the research and facts seldom weighs that heavily. 

I was truly amazed recently when I heard a discussion where people were discussing how fancy car another one had, and how much it had cost and so on. I couldn’t say anything, I was just feeling amazed about how anyone can care about what car somebody has!! I hardly know what car we have :) And this is honestly not about me being jealous! If I would suddenly get millions of euros, I would not even consider buying a new car; my bike would however need to be upgraded a bit.. and maybe our boat ...

One point that seldom is raised in the discussion is the mobility of the increasing part of our population that can’t drive a car. The share of elderly is raising all the time, and these people don’t want to just sit at home! They want to go out and see as much as we "car-driving-age people" do. And what about the young ones? How is there independency development suffering from not being able to go anywhere without mum or dad driving them? If we develop our cities to be based on private cars, then we disregard these groups of people and their needs. 

The "positive" thing to all this is that it could be much worse. In StPetersburg the car is really seen as a "symbol of freedom", you can not in any way suggest anything that is not supporting the use of the cars. I had the courage to ask how it can be any "freedom" in sitting in traffic jam for 2h instead of taking the metro in 20 minutes. They replied a lot in Russian and I suspect the translator didn’t translate everything to me..they sounded  a bit upset.. hmm..?? Touchy topic also over there it seems!

Not the safest way of moving around. This is taken between Alexandria and Cairo in about 100km/h!

Visiting Alexandria gives you a glimpse of how things end up when you really don’t think about the mobility needs of people and just build more and more houses. The city is totally FULL! Public transport is not really working too well, except for the minibuses along the corniche, they work really well. Now the situation is such that you can’t really walk anywhere because of the traffic, which means that people use more their cars even for short distances...and there we have a nice loop. 

Want to finish up with saying that there are also those truly "green" people who really don’t use cars and still move around, also with smaller children. So there is hope! I belonged to this group for a while, it was great not having a car!! Then switching job location "made me" have to buy a car..as you can see I moved easily over to the "wonna be green" ones who have a lot of good explanations for why they need to use the car. Below you can see my favourite mode of transportation :) 

My favourite mode of transportation.