Thoughts from Iceland
For us, the trip to Denmark was a great lesson. During the trip we both got ideas on how we can continue our project as well as a personal experience on how different the projects were. But even though the projects were very different, they have in common that each of them could be used in more places. Everywhere we need to take better care of the environment, reduce waste, and adopt sustainable thinking. Getting ideas from other groups on how to reach people, what works and what doesn't work was very instructive.
Working to reduce waste, ie. Zero-Waste is an eternal project. Seeing with our own eyes how a small community like Christiania is far ahead in terms of a sustainable society, gave us increased optimism that we can go further with reuse and recycling than we already do. For our small town in Hveragerdi, it is very important in what way we spend our money, so it is good to see how others can maximize the use of old things and can counteract the waste we already have. We believe that we will be able to make good use of our experience and make the Zero-Waste project even more established among the townspeople than it has already been done.
Additionally, Anton from Iceland said this: Personally, it was fun to meet and get to know other participants and see/hear about their projects. It was also great to be able use the flight over to meet some family members and therefore reduce the flight trip as well as carbon footprint!
During the trip the Icelandic team got allot of new ideas, f. ex to make a little repair corner in the local mall in Hveragerdi to encourage people to waste less and re-use more by giving their “things” and after life. Also, it was great to see all these small green community gardens/areas and it gave us ideas in general on how to better our little town, even though that is not relevant for this project perse.