Sustainable Living in Finland

 

                                                                

My Lifestyle 

                                                                      

We live in a big white detached house. The room temperature in our house is about 21C°. We turn off the appliances and the lights that we are not using. When we go out, we check that every light is turned off. In the summer we open our windows to cool down the room temperature. We don´t use the dryer a lot because we often hang our clothes to dry. We cook food and we don´t eat out that much. We are trying to not waste any food. We grow berries and apples in our backyard. We try to recycle everything we can. We also sell our old stuff and donate some to charity. I try to waste less water by not taking long showers and not using warm/hot water. I think that it´s important to take care of our beautiful nature. Nature is so important to us and it makes us happy.       

                                                                                                                                           
Olli Pirttimaa

Household Energy Use                                                                                                                    

I think I am pretty good at saving energy in my household. I don´t usually waste energy that much, because I think it isn´t ecological and it can be quite expensive. I always turn off all the lights in my room when I don´t need them and I always turn off all the electronics when I don´t use them. For example, I always turn off my TV when I don´t watch it. I try to keep my room´s thermostat set as low as possible, but of course not too low during winters. Our living room´s thermostat is also always set quite low. My parents always hang our clothes, rather than use a dryer. We don´t even own a dryer. We also always use an electric tea kettle to boil water. One thing we´ll have to change in our energy usage, is that we use the coffee maker too often, but I don´t think that it´s that big of a deal. I think my family and I are good at saving energy. But I still think we could be better.

                                                                                                                                        '
Eetu Kanniainen

My Green Enough Family                                                                                                                 

My family isn´t the most conserving family out there, but we try our best. Turning the lights in a room no one is in is something we always do. It´s an unwanted waste of electricity. We don´t use any single use items unless it´s a special occasion for example, a party and there´s not enough plates for everybody. Recycling is something we do. We mostly recycle paper and cardboard and sometimes other things such as batteries. Most of the clothes that have gone small, we put up for sale or give to someone else. Broken clothes go into trash anyhow. We don´t drink bottled water, because it´s not necessary. We always drink from the tap and use tap water for cooking and such. We have two bathrooms, each with a dual-flush toilet. I´m the only one in my family who uses a bicycle, it´s not because they don´t like cycling or that they´re lazy. My parents just don´t have bicycles and their workplaces are quite far away from home. Because of this they must rely on their cars to get them to different places. My family is quite green in my opinion and we will try to improve in the future.

Riku Jääskeläinen

Taking Care of the Environment   

                                                                                                 

Our family takes care of nature. We save energy and we recycle. I want to continue this life style. For example, I could live in a small house and maybe I could live there with some friends so it would be cheaper to live.  I have two brothers and one sister, so, we have a lot of extra clothes. I think it would be nice if we donated the too small clothes to poor people. We can also eat local food and we grow some of our own food and vegetables.

We can also make some of our own energy by building wind turbines and placing solar panels on our roof. That would help us to save money.

Our family travels a lot. We fly few times a year and drive a car at least 15 kilometers a day. In my opinion that´s way too much. And it´s so expensive. Luckily, my parents have good salaries.

Veetu Svala

Sustainable Lifestyle                                                                                                                         

My family is quite ecological. We recycle papers, plastics and cardboard. My brother and I go to school by bike, and my mom usually rides a bike to work too. Our house is heated by water that is circulating under the floors. So, we don´t have to burn oil or wood or pellets to keep our house warm. We try to keep biowaste in the minimum and try not to buy too much groceries at a time. I think trying to live as sustainably as possible is important. It´s a shame that many of the world´s most powerful people don´t want to believe and see the global warming. It´s sad that for an example the Brazilian president doesn´t do anything to the Amazon rainforest fires or let anyone help. He is just saying that “Amazon is not the lungs of the world, it´s Brazil´s property, and I can do whatever I want with it.” I hope that someday soon everybody realizes the seriousness of this situation and tries to make it better. It won´t help if only Finland or some other small country tries to slow down or stop the global warming. I hope that the next president of the United States is smarter and thinks what´s best for the Earth.

                                                                                                                 
Lasse Räinä

My Family´s Sustainability                                                                                                               

My family and I don´t live extremely sustainably, more just to make life easier. We always turn off the lights, the TVs, and other appliances when we leave the house/room, but more just so they would live longer, rather than because we want to be sustainable and save nature.

We don´t waste much food, because my family doesn´t do much but eat, but we eat a lot of e.g. ready-made pizza, so we have a lot of plastic trash.

Plastic trash, which we do not recycle by the way. We only have trash bin, and that is where all our trash goes, no matter if it´s plastic, paper, metal, glass, or anything really.

I would like to be one of the people who recycle and live sustainably in many ways. I want to move to the countryside when I´m older and start recycling and have a compost and an electric car. I also want to grow as much food as possible for my family, but that awaits me in the future, hopefully.

                                                                                                                                          

Julia Puominen

Sustainable Life     

                                                                                                                            

This is a topic that I´m particularly interested in right now. My family and I have started paying attention to this type of issues even though we still could do a lot more.

I think that we´re doing a pretty great job at remembering to turn off the lights when leaving a room and unplugging unnecessary things.  Even if we have air conditioning, we don´t use it that much and in the winter our house isn´t too warm. We don´t have a dryer and we hang-dry our clothes.

Sustainable eating isn´t easy but we´re trying. We have a compost that we use, and we use the soil from the compost for some of our plants. We´ve been planning to make our own garden for vegetables, but that´s next summer.

Our family has been donating a lot of clothes and toys to the Res Cross foundation. The only problem is that we sometimes still tend to buy unnecessary stuff and items that we don´t need.

I´ve noticed that my parents taught my sister and I to recycle when we were younger, so we are good at that. We recycle plastics, newspapers, cardboards, biodegradable stuff, electronics, batteries, metals, glass and chemical waste. Now that I´ve written all those things down I feel like we do more than I´ve ever realized.

                                                                                                                                              
Annika Repo