publicité
haut
Accueil du site > Blogs > Les blogs > Greenings from Earth ! > What I will remember from Finland...

Greenings from Earth !

Par Benjamin Cliquet
24-01-2011

What I will remember from Finland...

What I will remember from Finland...
(December 2010, sunset on an island of the south of Helsinki.)
Before launching soon a series of articles on a new theme (Canada, where I am now), a reader kindly suggested I could make an assessment on my finnish experience. This article will also be an opportunity for me to speak briefly about the file that I just finished writing and that I put you here at your disposal.

Welcome on this new blog, english version of the french one, called "Vise le green", also available on this website. I have been writing on "Vise le green" for almost five months. As a student in a french business school, I took a sabbatical year to travel and meet some environmental experts about different issues I targeted. After two months and a half in Helsinki, I am now in Canada until mid-april. I will finish this project in Romania, as a volunteer in an environmental NGO. As written, this first article is an assessment of my stay in Finland.

During two months, I interviewed 18 people : university professors, a general manager of a waste management company, members of professional associations, people working in the energy community, a sociologist, a deputy from the Green Party... Thanks to them, I glimpsed the country’s environmental leadership in the areas of waste management and energy mostly, occasionally on city planning (eco-district of Viikki in particular) and water (pollution of the Baltic), on the broader topic of the carbon market but I also learnt about the behavior of Finns. To take stock of my impressions of the country’s sustainable development, I will leave one of the first articles I wrote about the country : "The finnish paradox". I wrote in this article (the idea was not mine) that the inhabitants had not energy-saving habits not only because the healthy nature does not allow them to see the "climate crisis" every day, but also because the effective use of resources at the energy level had led to one of the cheapest form of electricity in Europe. My final impression is that the habits of the Finns suffered no fracture. They never got used to save electricity or water, and it will change little, unlike France where the various oil crises are rooted in attitudes, habits to pay attention to energy consumption (at least we try to improve these habits). However, the Finns have been used for a very long time to sort the bottles and bring them back to the store, to keep the paper from other waste, and thus gradually became used to sort any type of waste, like biodegradable compost which is quite popular and practiced. This habit to compost, from households as well as from waste companies, is probably what I appreciated most. In addition, a framework is established to promote good practice. For example, there are several salvage companies like Kierrätyskeskus (for whom I volunteered), bike repairs, installations of a minimum of four different bins in public places (often plastic, paper, cardboard and mixed waste), but I especially want to mention to a much larger scale, the excellent transport network (in the Helsinki metropolitan area). Metro, tram, train, bus and many bicycle paths allow residents to take only little car. However, two things must be noticed (because they are not perfect) : in waste management, the country lags behind in terms of burning and still contains too many landfills, even if this historical delay is being caught up ; on energy, even though they use well their biomass, use of coal is still too high (12% of the energy mix in 2009) and harmful to the environment. But since I cannot afford to finish on a bad note, I would like to point out the brilliant progress in water treatment in the country since World War II to try to solve the problem of the Baltic Sea pollution.

All these ideas, and much more, are collected in a first file attached below. It includes several articles of this blog (the french version of it) with many details added, especially on waste management. The long version (50 pages, only availabe in French) has been cut to a version of 15 pages, translated into English.

So let’s close the finnish page and open the canadian’s one. Before going for two months in the Vancouver area, I am in Quebec until early February to talk about energy and, probably, the electric car.

See you soon, Be green, Ben

PDF - 755.3 ko

Report Finland

COMMENTAIRES
Soyez le premier à réagir à cet article !
PUBLIER UN COMMENTAIRE

Un message, un commentaire ?

  • Se connecter
  • Créer un compte
  • NEWSLETTERS
    Cochez les cases pour vous abonner à vos newsletters
SPIP | squelette | | Plan du site | Suivre la vie du site RSS 2.0
publicité
bas