Shopaholism?!

Some claim that the more we buy presents, the more we feel guilty of the time unspent with the ones we care. This was suddenly true with Lucas. He felt that during the past year he had been selfish and focused on himself, rather then on his family and friends. And this was influencing his behavior in shop now. He was looking around and thought that one present was not enough for his daughter and son, his children deserve more. Therefore he returned back to get one more, as all the others were buying so many presents too.

Lucas returned back home with bags full of shiny presents and extra plastic bags from all the lovely shops. His wife commented his bags with saying - "I hope you left something for the others too". Lucas stopped and felt ashamed - he had been lured to buy things, shopaholism had attacked him. In the midst of changing his thinking and behavior, he faced a setback. Lucas thought that the sustainable thinking would have been rooted in himself already, but this was not true.

If we are not careful, anyone of us, can be lured to buying unnecessary gifts in unrecyclable packages. Being sustainable requires more thinking and listening to the real needs. It is easy to be lured. In the end, our sustainability is measured at the counter...

Over 200 registered!

Some count days to the Christmas eve, some to the start of the New Year - for us - the counting goes a bit further until the start of the conference. This means, we have 51 days to go and many details to put in place. It has been great to see, how the word is spreading round and how conference participants and delegations are forming up. Already 200 participants are coming - are you still considering?

Location means everything. This is true as we face it daily. It is one thing to live close to other countries with just a short distance on train to reach other them, then in "far" North. This means that before reaching us, one needs to make a decision if it is worth while to create CO2-emissions for that. Some claim that we could create the same effect with video-connections. This is unfortunately not yet true, as how could we pass following things true it:

• person to person discussions with new people
• atmosphere and cultural insights, dancing
• smells and tastes of pure northern ingredients
• the feeling of excitement when solutions found their new homes
• market atmosphere with freedom to decide on what to see and hear
• excellent hosts with inspiration

Day to day communication can nicely be replaced with on-line connections, but this you need to experience yourself to be motivated to continue back home!

Responsible - trendy adjective

Responsible tourism, responsible food, responsible consumer, responsible travel... Everyone has suddenly woken up and manifastates that being responsible is now the trend that you should not just pass by.

There used to be a time that we were looking into WHO is responsible, rather than what the concept responsible means. From who the focus then shifted into responsible FOR WHAT? And only now the real analyses of what responsibility really means have started.

Responsible actions take into account the entire organization, not just the surrounding where the actions take place and the external stakeholders, but also the values of it, working environment and personnel. It is not enough to change the slogans of the organization and claim that we are truly responsible, if the actions are limited to recycling of papers or offsetting CO2 emissions.

It is time to focus on responsible solutions and start to use them - be trend-setter with true actions, take part in Solutions local, together - Conference. If you have already registered, you are among 200 forerunners, if not it is time to act. 

On a mission

Lucas was reading the latest publication on the Brand of Finland and thought that for the first time, the document was actually quite practical and he was able to spot realistic tasks also for himself. The Mission to Finland consists of tasks under three topics: In 2030 Finland will be

• functionality: the problem-solver of the world
• nature: all the lakes are drinkable and organic food is served
• education: teachers are without borders
• and Finns are bold enough to tell about all this!

Inspired by all the suggestions, Lucas decided to organize a party for his neighborhood as they had recently finished a road construction on their street. He also gave up on water bottles and decided to have the next meeting in a library, rather than in an ordinary office building. 

The report stated that a functional society is not fulfilling by controlling, but by doing things together. This is what the Solutions local, together is all about!

Talking about money

The recent months have shown that it would be so much easier, if we would talk about money instead of sustainable development. When we talk about the use of resources and quality of life, it is as if they would not have financial implications. In reality, many municipalities need to raise their taxes and service costs in future, as the basic resources, such as water and energy, will cost more. By being sustainable, we would get savings that everyone is so much searching for.

Talking about money would also mean that

• Local authorities would all be eager to prioritize the sustainable solutions, as that would mean savings in the long run.
• The decision-makers would see the prize tag on some things that in the end are considered prizeless, such as clean air, water and soil.
• No one would expect the events dealing with sustainable development to be free of charge, instead they would pay without any questions daily fees around 800 EUR.

I have then seriously considered naming the conference in the end - "Financial solutions local, together - maybe then we would all wake up?

First snowfall

It felt cold to get out of bed this morning. As Lucas slid his feet into the slippers he wondered if the weather forecast had been right and it had snowed during the night. Peeping through the curtains he saw that it had. Coffee, I need hot coffee, Lucas said to himself and headed for the kitchen.

He had come across a promising contact while surfing on the social media. And now his business idea was starting to take shape. Lucas got dressed and went out to do the snow work. He was whistling.

Lucas felt that he could do anything, as making contacts was so easy through services like Facebook and Twitter. It was like first snow, lots of promises of fun, but still too fragile to stay...

Network of networks?

When looking into the sustainable development from the city perspective -it is evident that every day resources are wasted in reinventing the wheel again. When serious changes would be needed, we rather focus in starting from zero then on looking outside and benefiting on what has already been done elsewhere. Internal process is needed, but why not speed it up a bit?

It is amazing, that the flow of information inside the organizations is still, in many cases, on a random level. More faster would be to consider each local authority as a network or a spider web that would have the same aim/interest in mind. This way, the message might reach the right nodes faster. For this to succeed, it would need a change in the way we consider the role of the local authorities. And in this respect, we would need a network of networks to speed up the exchange of good practices in the Baltic Sea Region.

Is a network of networks even possible to be created? Would we finally be ready to share experiences, both good and bad, for the benefit of the common sustainable future of our region?

Come and check out, how we succeed with creating a node for the networks, namely Solutions local, together -conference!