Urban growers and a goods exchange and donation service received Kesko's sustainable development awards
KESKO CORPORATION PRESS RELEASE 16.05.2011 AT 14.30 1(5)
Kesko's awards for sustainable development were distributed today in Helsinki. The awards went to Dodo's urban growers, Netcycler Ltd, the 'Yritetään yhdessä' association (Let's make a joint effort) and the small green workshop NY of the Ulvila upper secondary school students.
The theme of the awards was materials efficiency
Kesko distributed a total of 30,000 in recognition awards for pioneers in sustainable development. Kesko wants to give recognition to projects that promote special responsible and sustainable production and consumption. The awards also serve as encouragement for voluntary work done with small resources.
The theme of sustainable development awards was materials efficiency. Materials efficient operations save natural resources, the environment and money.
This year, one of the awards was targeted for the age group of 13-20 whom we wanted to encourage to generate ideas for future materials use.
Award recipients
Kesko' sustainable development awards were distributed for the seventh time. We received 78 applications, many companies, schools and private persons included.
The recipients of the 2011 sustainable development awards are:
Dodo's urban growers from Helsinki, 10,000.
Netcycler Ltd, nationwide goods exchange and donation service, 10,000.
Yritetään yhdessä (Let's make a joint effort) from Oulu, 7,000.
Small green workshop NY from Ulvila, 3,000. The award goes to upper secondary school students Eetu Koskinen, Salla Hautaviita and Maria Tuominen, 1,000 for each.
More information about the activities and merits of all awardees is given in the attachment of this release.
Awardees promote materials efficient operations
When selecting awardees, the jury particularly emphasised the fact that in addition to materials efficient operations, the recipient promotes and encourages his/her operating environment to prevent waste generation and reuse materials. From among the applicants, the jury wanted to highlight those who have taken materials efficiency further than ordinary recycling.
The jury members were Henrik Österlund, Head of Motiva's Material Efficiency Unit; Jyri Seppälä, Director of the Consumption and Production Centre, Finnish Environment Institute (Syke), Minna Halme, Professor of the Aalto University's School of Economics; Leo Stranius, Secretary General of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, and Merja Haverinen, Kesko Corporation's Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications and Responsibility, who acted as the chair of the jury.
Further information available from Merja Haverinen, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications and Responsibility, tel. +358 1053 22764 and Helena Frilander CR Manager, tel. +358 1053 23143.
Kesko (www.kesko.fi) is a retail specialist whose stores offer quality to the daily lives of consumers. Kesko has about 2,000 stores engaged in chain operations in the Nordic and Baltic countries, Russia, and Belarus.
ATTACHMENT:
Kesko's sustainable development awards in 2011
Dodo's urban growers (10,000):
Dodo is an urban environmental association, established in 1995, which believes that environmental problems are solved in towns and cities. The activities of Dodo's urban growers started in spring 2009 in the framework of the association's theme year 'Cities and Food'. The purpose was to conduct a small experiment to see whether it is actually possible to grow food in an urban environment. The very same year, urban growing was already referred to as a phenomenon in the national media. In the previous years, some two hundred people have participated in the projects and the number keeps growing.
Urban growing is materials efficient, starting from the building of the growing plots: platforms are made of recycled materials, such as board, concrete bags, car tyres, buckets or coffee sacks. In addition, unpacked compost soil obtained from municipal waste is ordered in large quantities to avoid multiple transport journeys and packaging material. Chemical fertilisers are not used and plant leavings are used for composts and soil improvement.
Urban growing encourages people to adopt an organic vegetarian diet. Environmental impacts of a vegetarian diet are many times smaller than those of a mixed food diet. When food comes from consumers' own yard or immediate neighbourhood, there is no need for extra packaging, transportation, shopping trips, storage - particularly the special attention required by the cold chain - while the consumption of all the energy involved is also avoided. Through its projects, Dodo also aims to increase people's awareness of the origins of food.
The jury sees urban growing as a future phenomenon, especially on global scale: in developing countries, urban growing plays an important role because of the poverty, unemployment and uncertainty in obtaining food. It is estimated that there are up to 800 million urban growers in the world (Source: Dodo).
As food accounts for one third of the carbon dioxide emissions generated by people, improving the appreciation of food and that way reducing the amount thrown away is important. Today the amount of food waste generated in households is larger than the amount of waste from food packaging. Materials efficiency can also be considered to include new uses of wasteland in an urban environment.
Further information: Dodo's urban growers: Maria Nordlund mobile +358 46 561 6427, urban growijat@dodo.org or Pinja Sipari, e-mail pinja.sipari@dodo.org, Chair of Dodo Association: Lotta Suistoranta, mobile +358 40 527 3506, e-mail lotta.suistoranta@dodo.org.
Netcycler Ltd (10,000):
Netcycler is an environmentally friendly goods exchange and donation service on the web. In Netcycler, users throughout Finland can exchange or donate their goods without charge and get things they need second-hand, which saves natural resources and reduces the generation of waste. The service is a counterpoint to conspicuous consumption, which is a significant factor from the perspective of overconsumption of natural resources and carbon dioxide emissions. Netcycler gives goods a new life.
Online recycling represents materials efficiency: the same goods serve several users when they are not left in cupboards to gather dust but donated to a new owner for reuse. No waste is generated or energy consumed. Repair, tuning and transportation costs involved are marginal compared with costs resulting from the manufacture of new products, even from recycled materials.
Thanks to the easy-to-use mail service, everybody can participate in goods recycling and reuse, irrespective of where they live. The Netcycler service is based on the exchange circle technology developed by Netcycler Ltd, which improves the efficiency of recycling and exchange transactions.
In the operations of Netcycler, the jury valued the use of the internet in increasing materials efficiency and promoting sustainable consumption.
Further information: Marketing Director Pär Andler, mobile +358 40 544 2728, e-mail par@netcycler.com, www.netcycler.fi.
Yritetään yhdessä - Let's make a joint effort association (7,000)
The association 'Yritetään yhdessä' has been operating since 1985 and owns a Sustainable Development Centre in Oulu. The centre prevents marginalisation and acts for a more ecologically sustainable world. Annually the centre employs nearly 200 young and long-term unemployed people in its workshops and in companies.
The centre also includes the Oulu upper secondary school's daytime education for adults and basic education for immigrants. Education and work are easy to combine.
The Sustainable Development Centre has premises for renovating furniture, bicycles and clothing. Activities also include preparing and providing eco points and composts. The centre also segregates a great amount of recycled paper for reclamation. All this reduces the amount of waste going to landfills by over 1,200 tons per year.
Materials efficiency is, above all, taken into account in the real estate specific waste segregation offered by the centre (eco points), in which e.g. the so-called full service covers the segregation, transportation and recycling of organic waste, batteries, fluorescent tubes, glass, metal, paperboard, tetrapacks, energy component, cardboard, furniture, and electronics. At some of the sites, organic waste is used in connection with real estate maintenance and the soil/fertiliser obtained is used for yard and real estate maintenance work made in the real estate. Some sites also provide recycling of old clothing for recovery and reuse. Collections are made daily and several dozens of long-term unemployed people contribute to various phases of activities. The result is a significant decrease in the amount of landfill waste and an extremely carel use of recyclable waste.
The centre also arranges material collections from housing areas. Their aim is to collect usable waste, such as paperboard, cardboard, tetrapacks, paper and return bottles mainly from small house areas. Collections are organised at a regular basis once a month in each area. The recyclable material obtained is transported to the House of Sustainable Development where it is segregated and transported in larger loads to cooperation partners of the Centre.
A new employment and training alternative of the Centre is building renovation and the Centre also provides manual building demolition service. Manual demolition gives better opportunities than machine-made demolition for reuse and recycling of structural parts and structures, such as windows, doors, bricks, beams and planks. Only after all needed and recyclable material has been removed, the rest of the building can be demolished with machine. This operating model greatly reduces the amount of waste going to landfill and enables reuse of elements in a good condition.
The jury wanted to recognise the association's long-term work for materials efficiency and the fact that the prevention of marginalisation also plays an important role in the operations of the association.
Further information: The association's Project Manager Timo Kolehmainen, mobile +358 44 034 0013, Chair Seppo Vaaraniemi, mobile +358 44 034 0013, office +358 8 341 320, www.kestavankehityksenkeskus.net and e-mail yy@dnainternet.net.
Small green workshop NY (3,000)
The small green workshop NY is a training firm founded by three Ulvila upper secondary school students in autumn 2010, which was part of the Young Entrepreneurship programme during school year 2010-2011. The aim of the programme is to teach entrepreneurship to young people through action.
The members of the small green workshop are all interested in ecological approach, recycling and ethical aspects, which also provided the basis for the values of the training firm. The enterprise manufactured all products on sale, such as a lantern, a vinyl record bowl and a fire-lighter rose, of recycled materials.
All team members - Maria Tuominen, Salla Hautaviita and Eetu Koskinen - study for the second year in the Ulvila upper secondary school. Two of the team members also study for a double degree. The members are aged from 17 to 18. Before establishing the firm, each of them had been involved with sustainable development values and the firm has further strengthened their interest in sustainable development.
The small green workshop was one of the representatives of the Satakunta region in the national young entrepreneurship fair organised in Lahti in April 2011.
The jury wants to encourage the young people of the small green workshop to entrepreneurship and successful performance with responsible and materials efficient practices. Kesko sees it very important that environmental values are taken widely into account in the training of young entrepreneurs.
Further information: Eetu Koskinen, mobile +358 45 133 8375, e-mail eetu_koskinen@luukku.com, Maria Tuominen, mobile +358 44 072 5930, e-mail maria.tuominen@gmail.com, http://pienivihreapajany.blogspot.com/, guiding teachers Juha Kujansuu, mobile +358 40 707 2166 and Hanna Savolainen, mobile +358 50 322 9881.
