Climate smart living in Kuopio
Climate smart living is made easy in Kuopio! This page contains tips for different areas of life to help the residents of Kuopio make climate wise choices.
Reducing your carbon footprint is beneficial in many ways:
- By reducing energy consumption, you also save on the electricity bill.
- By walking and cycling, you also benefit from daily exercise.
- By increasing the proportion of vegetables on your plate, your health can also improve.
Smart transportation
Transportation accounts for more than a fifth of the average Finn’s carbon footprint, about 1.7 t CO2-eq/person. The use of fossil fuels has big climate effects.
By reducing driving and giving up the use of fossil fuels, we can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of our entire lifestyle. At the same time, health, well-being and the comfort of the environment increase.
Smart housing solutions
Housing causes the carbon footprint of the average Finn to be around 2.5 t CO2eq/person. Housing accounts for one third of the climate impact of the entire lifestyle. The carbon footprint of living consists mainly of the consumption of heat and electricity produced with fossil energy. Climate emissions are also caused by the construction and equipping of buildings.
A large climate impact also means a great opportunity to reduce one’s own emissions:
- by switching to the use of renewable energy solutions for heating
- by switching to the use of green electricity confirmed with a guarantee of origin
- by improving the energy efficiency of the building by renovating
- by rationalizing energy consumption
Choosing a green electricity provider is the easiest solution in terms of its impact. In Kuopio, about half of the electricity used by consumers is renewable. In more and more houses, renewable heating energy is produced with heat pumps from ground heat, outside air and exhaust air from buildings. Solar energy is also a sensible complementary solution for both electricity and heat production.
-
-
- Climate smart housing solutions (pdf, in Finnish)
- Free energy guidance in North Savo
- Motiva energy guidance on Facebook
- Motiva website on housing
- Motiva website on solar energy
- Tips for smart energy consumption (pdf, in Finnish)
- Everyman’s climate tips
- Information on sustainable building and renovation
-
Smart food choices
The average Finn’s diet has a carbon footprint of about 1.5 t CO2-eq. More than two-thirds of that is caused by meat and dairy products, which account for approximately one-third of the food consumed. Animal-based food therefore has a large carbon footprint. Reducing food waste also affects the carbon footprint.
Based on food consumption data, the current average diet contains meat well above the nutritional recommendations.
Change your diet to be more environmentally friendly
- switch to a healthy and nutritionally complete plant-based diet
- eat legumes and wild fish as a source of protein
- reduce the consumption of meat, cheese and other dairy products
-
- plenty of vegetables, berries and fruits every day
- a variety of vegetable proteins every day
- whole grain and potato as a side dish
- fish from nearby waters a couple of times a week
- considering cheeses, milk and eggs
- meat no more than a few times a week – replace meat meals with protein-rich legumes and wild fish
Also learn to prepare and put food on the plate appropriately. Examine the contents of the refrigerator before going grocery shopping. Eat the food you bought, remember to use leftovers. Make use of food items whose expiration date is approaching. Do your grocery shopping at once if it’s a long way to the store. Get daily groceries from the local store on foot or by bike.
-
- Pre-cooked beans, peas, lentils, and chickpeas can be found in the canned food section. Nowadays they are mostly packed in cardboard packaging. All you need to do to prepare them is drain them, rinse them, and heat them if necessary.
- The ready-to-eat section of the shop contains many kinds of oat, bean and other vegetable products as well as vegetarian steaks, balls and sausages.
- Tofu and oat protein products can be found in the cheese section.
- Dried beans, lentils and peas as well as different kinds of ground broad bean, pea and soybean products can be found in the dried products section. Dried legumes are inexpensive, but their cooking requires some planning. Especially beans require half a day of soaking and over an hour’s cooking time before use. Processed ground products are easier to use.
- Many kinds of frozen products also use vegetable or mushroom proteins.
-
People often feel that the biggest challenges in adopting a climate friendly diet are related to their normal eating habits and the lack of recipes for good, easy and inexpensive vegetarian dishes that are quick to make when you are hungry.
Here are some good recipes that we prepared for the Ilmasto-olkkari project and a workshop held at the Kuopio Familyhouse. The main ingredients are Finnish vegetables that keep well, and the proteins are peas, lentils, beans, and wild-caught fish.
Climate smart habits
A significant part of the climate impact of our lifestyle is caused by the consumption of goods and services related to home, clothing, free time and hobbies. Our current way of consuming goods and leisure services results in emissions of an average of 2 t CO2 eq/person.
The difficulty of reducing the carbon footprint of consumption is that the effects of individual purchases are usually small. The environmental impact of a single electronic device, garment, toy, sports equipment or piece of furniture is not great, but as a whole, the current amount of our consumption is unsustainable. For example, the clothing industry produces 10% of the world’s emissions.
The city of Kuopio has calculated the carbon footprint of consumption. Consumption-based emissions calculation aims to estimate all emissions caused by the consumption of municipal residents, regardless of where the consumed commodity was produced.
In Kuopio, the largest emissions from consumption are caused by energy consumption, food, goods and services, and transportation. Kuopio’s goal is to halve the consumption-based carbon footprint by 2030 from the 2005 level.
-
We need to change the way we use and care for our possessions, as transitioning from fossil fuels and renewable energy sources alone is not enough to reduce our carbon footprint to a globally sustainable level. We need to use consumables, such as clothes and other similar goods, much longer than we currently do and buy fewer new products. Existing products should also be used more frequently, which means increasing their rate of use, for example, by loaning or recycling.
Climate-friendly solutions for consumption:
• Make sure goods are in active use and take care of them to prolong their lifecycle.
• Buy less and better quality. When buying a new product, consider its lifecycle.
• Borrow and rent items that you only need occasionally.
• Loan your own things to others, share ownership of items.
• Buy used products and recycle items that you no longer need.
• Service and repair items you own. Value your possessions.
• Buy products that were produced using renewable energy, that have an ecolabel or were produced using recycled materials. -
Waste sorting is often seen as a great example of environmentally responsible action. However, in terms of the climate impact of consumption, meticulous waste sorting has quite a small effect. What is more important is reducing the amount of materials and energy used as well as the accumulation of waste by consuming less and more sustainably. Sorting is important for the implementation of circular economy, as it produces reusable raw materials.
Reducing the carbon footprint of consumption requires a change in the way we think and what we value. We are used to buying the items we need even for short-term or minor use and always buying new items to replace broken ones. What if we started to appreciate longer lifecycles, durability and repairability rather than being excited about newness? What if we favoured services and paid serious attention to finding alternatives to buying?
From a financial and even an environmental perspective, using less money might not be the best possible solution. Instead, we should consume low-carbon services: rent products, service and repair items, consume culture and art, and buy services produced for people by people. A change in consumer culture does not mean that our quality of life needs to suffer. On the contrary, it can offer new kinds of opportunities for a good life.
-
Kuopio offers a wide range of services that promote sustainable consumption. We made it easier to start using them by compiling a list of the various leasing companies, repair services, and second-hand shops around Kuopio. The list includes a wide range of different kinds of products and services from traditional crafts to new types of private leasing service platforms.