As Maya and I go to put our dishes away after we finish eating, I make another discovery: The stainless steel bowl in which the children scrape their leftovers before putting their bowls in the dish rack by the kitchen is nearly empty. Eva the kitchen worker tells me that the children are always encouraged to try everything and are welcome to come for seconds, but are told not to take more than they think they can eat. But that’s not the whole story.
School lunches are free in Sweden, so food waste directly affects the city’s wallet. Plus, it’s taxing for the environment. Producing and transporting food from the farm to the end consumer takes a lot of resources—agricultural land, energy, water, chemicals, and fuel—and the later in the food cycle that it gets wasted, the greater the impact on the environment. Globally, food waste causes over three billion tons of carbon emissions every year, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. To put that in perspective, if food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, after China and the US.
When food is discarded in the school cafeteria, not only has it been produced in vain, but it also takes resources to dispose of it. To save money and lessen its environmental footprint, the city launched a competition in 2012 challenging all schools in the district to reduce their food waste. The top school stood to win a little over a thousand dollars, and the city vowed to use the rest of the money saved to buy a greater share of organic foods. The children took the challenge to heart. In the three years that the competition has run, Maya’s school has placed in the top three out of nearly forty schools for reducing waste, and in 2014 they also had the least amount of waste per plate: 0.04 ounces per student, which is basically the weight of four large peas.
The kids in Maya’s class were noticeably proud of this achievement. “We don’t waste any food at our school,” one of the boys had casually informed me while we were waiting in line to get served, while another girl had chimed in, “We don’t take more than we can eat.” Winning a citywide contest had proven to be an incredibly effective way to inspire change and make the students own it. “We’ve seen a lasting effect of the competition,” says Chatrine, who handles much of the school’s environmental education, when I catch her after school one day. “They influence each other and remind each other not to take more than they can eat.”
The cafeteria is central to the school’s environmental work in other ways. The menu is now “climate adjusted,” which means that each meal is carefully composed based not only on its nutritional value but also on its impact on the environment. Because of this, beef has more or less been eliminated from the menu, as it has been blamed for causing a substantial amount of greenhouse gas emissions and takes much more land and water to produce than other types of meat. Hamburgers are pretty much out, and fish burgers made from certified sustainable fish are in. Rice, a crop that is a source of major methane emissions and has to be shipped long distances, is only served about once a month. Potatoes and pasta have mostly picked up the slack.
Swedish schools also try to buy as many organic products as possible. The city of Borås, which handles all purchases for the preschools and schools in the district, has over the past few years gradually increased the share of organic foods, which was set to reach 40 percent in 2016. Maya’s school and several others have already surpassed that goal. “The pasta, bread, milk, fruit, vegetables, cheese—it’s all organic. It’s almost harder to think of things that we buy that are nonorganic than organic,” says Eva, the cafeteria worker. “We buy organic both because it’s better for the environment and because there are fewer toxins in it. It’s the same reason why I buy organic for my family at home.”
Beyond the cafeteria, Maya’s school emphasizes the connections between personal decisions and the environment in other ways. This year the students are working with the theme “Climate and Energy,” and the school has found some creative ways to introduce the concept. In the fall, students were asked to think about what they had for breakfast and find out where their food came from. They also looked for certifications, like organic and fair trade, then entered all the information into a PowerPoint presentation on an iPad. A gray map with a little white airplane illustrated how far the food had traveled. In one group, all the food amazingly enough came from Sweden, while in others it came from several exotic locations from far away, such as oranges from Argentina or cheese from Germany. This sparked a discussion about energy: what it is, how it is spent, and how it affects the climate. Often, these discussions continue when the children get home.
“The kids turn into little environmental police—they go home and nag their parents about conserving energy,” Chatrine says. “They tell them to hang out the laundry instead of drying it in the tumble dryer, turn off the lights when they leave a room, and not let the water run when they brush their teeth. The older ones talk about climate change too.”
While I’m ecstatic over the thought of Maya eating homemade and mostly organic food every day and learning all about the environment in the classroom, environmental education in Swedish schools is so ordinary to the other parents that nobody even thinks to mention it to me. It reminds me of a friend of mine in Indiana who used to work as a high school science teacher and faced a huge battle with some parents over an eighth-grade curriculum that focused on human-induced climate change. Even though her unit followed the state standards, one of the parents went so far as to accuse her of spreading propaganda and complained about it to the principal and school board. “It was incredibly stressful,” she says. “I’ve talked to multiple teachers who have struggled with the same thing, especially in small, rural towns.” In Sweden, however, teaching kids about climate change and the environmental costs of development and economic growth is not something parents seem to consider political or controversial. Instead, they embrace it as a matter of self-preservation of the human species.
What really amazes me, though, is that the school’s climate-adjusted menu has slipped through without vocal protests.
When I do some digging around, I find a couple of mildly critical voices whose main complaint is that the school should prioritize local food—for example, beef produced in Sweden—over organic. But overall, eating a vegetarian diet, or at least cutting down on red meat, apparently has become mainstream—so mainstream that when an old friend and I decide to catch up over lunch, the first place she suggests is the new vegan raw-food café in town. “They have such good food there,” my friend, whom I remember as a devoted carnivore, tells me.
I can only assume that when it comes to saving the environment, there are no sacred cows in Sweden. Not even in the form of a steak.
A Special Friend Named Towa
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The changing of the seasons is an important part of life’s steady rhythm in Scandinavia, and each is celebrated for its own merits. Tourists, however, typically don’t come to Scandinavia to “meet the spring” the way they would go to, say, Paris or New York. Which is understandable, since this season sometimes feels like a long, slightly warmer extension of winter, just with less snow. The objective, meteorological spring in Sweden occurs after February 15, whenever there are seven days of rising daily temperatures averaging between thirty-two and fifty degrees Fahrenheit. This objective start of spring may or may not coincide with the subjective signs of spring. Chain saws revving in the forest. Alfresco dining with wool blankets. The distinct smell of dirt, evaporating rain, and freshly cut pine trees. The return of life and growth. And, if the snow doesn’t melt fast enough, the collective race to put out the patio furniture, as if this act alone will force out warmer weather.
“Reducing spring to a matter of weather is like reducing love to a series of chemical signals in our brains,” says a speaker during valborg, a celebration of the arrival of spring that I attend with the girls. A pagan tradition with roots in the Middle Ages, valborg occurs on April 30 every year and, in its modern form, usually involves choral singing, racy student parades, and enor
mous bonfires. “I’ve been told that spring will come tomorrow,” the speaker says, trying to boost morale as we huddle around a paltry fire by the clubhouse in the pouring rain, “but meanwhile, let’s enjoy the beauty of nature and let the warmth come from within.”
We have no choice but to do exactly that. The cheap plastic chairs on the small patio outside the Shack are set up and ready for use, but the warmer temperatures evade us. At least it’s getting visibly lighter every day, and by the end of April, it stays light well past nine in the evening. The light more than anything creates a visual bridge between winter and summer and gives us all a much-needed serotonin boost. All of a sudden it seems like people have lost their gloomy winter veil—the normally reserved Swedes all seem happier, friendlier, more hopeful. The light also sets my children on the fast track to insomnia. “How can it be eight o’clock already? It only feels like six!” Maya complains every night as I attempt to start the bedtime routine. Nora, who usually predictably conks out around seven and sleeps for twelve hours, bounces out of the bedroom two, three, even four times to tell me that she can’t sleep. The blackout curtains do absolutely nothing to fool her brain into thinking that it’s time to go night-night. Two massages and three bedtime stories later, she’s still awake. Lying in bed with her for forty-five minutes and reassuring her that the Sleep Fairy is going to come and sprinkle her magic slumber dust any minute now doesn’t do the trick either. Finally, I decide to throw in the towel and wait until nine o’clock before I even attempt to put them to bed.
Springtime also marks the start of the gardening season, an event on par with Christmas for my mom, who grows vegetables in a greenhouse about the size of a small apartment. One day the girls and I drive out to her house, a nineteenth-century homestead about twenty minutes from the Shack, where she lives quasi–off the grid with her husband. As we pull up in front of the carport, where firewood is stacked in neat rows all the way to the roof, she comes out and greets us dressed in her soiled gardening pants and a mustard-colored button-down shirt, her frizzy, henna-dyed hair temporarily tamed in a knot. Her hands are dirty too; she’s spent this sunny morning planting potatoes in the raised beds in her backyard, and she’s oozing a gardening high. Some people connect with nature through epic hikes through the mountains or cross-country skiing through the wilderness. Meanwhile, my mom finds inner peace by filling her sunroom with tomato seedlings and lemon trees.
“Come on in, I’ve got something to show you!”
The last time she said that, she and her husband had installed a modern underground root cellar for food storage in the backyard. I really don’t know what to expect this time. We follow her to the first-floor bathroom and she opens the door. “We call her Towa,” Mom says affectionately and points to something on the floor. And it is not the new furry kitten Maya and Nora were hoping for. Whatever it is looks like a large green watering can with a heart-shaped opening at the top and a long plastic handle hanging down on one side.
“We use Towa to collect pee to fertilize the garden,” Mom explains proudly as she shows off her latest internet purchase. “Did you know that urine is known as the liquid gold of gardening? It’s completely insane to flush such a great resource down the toilet!”
Then she starts instructing us on how to create the magic potion for the garden.
“From now on you only need to use the toilet if you’re doing a number two. For number one, just use Towa, and throw the toilet paper in the trash can. After she’s been used a few times I dilute the urine with water and sprinkle it over the plants.”
Nora and Maya are way more excited about the custom-made pee bucket than I ever could have imagined and race each other to it. Little sister comes out on top this time. She quickly pulls down her pants and smiles with delight as a light yellow stream hits the green plastic with a splash. I’m slightly less enthusiastic.
“I think I’ll just use the toilet if that’s okay.”
Mom looks disappointed and dumbfounded.
“Why would you? This is the most sustainable and ecologically sound way to handle urine. And my vegetables are going to grow like weeds. It’s a win-win.”
She’s right, of course. Fertilizing produce with human urine is ingenious, as it is both sterile and chock-full of nutrients, not to mention free, and the supply never ending. Several pilot projects are already up and running in Scandinavia to see if urine can be used as an agricultural fertilizer on a larger scale. Securing the supply will probably be the greatest challenge, since few Swedes would be willing to go as far as my mom to set up their own chemical-free fertilizer production. My mom, who has a sharp eye for cutting-edge gardening practices, is as usual ahead of the curve.
Even though she came of age in the ’60s, my mom was never a hippie. Unlike me, she never walked in demonstrations and shouted homemade slogans against atomic bomb testing or protested the Norwegian seal hunt. But at this point I realize that my mom may be the most radical environmental activist I know. One small action at a time, she’s doing her share to save the planet by voluntarily forfeiting conveniences that even I balk at giving up. Here she was, growing and burying her food in the backyard like a pioneer woman, while I was still going to the grocery store every week like an unenlightened conformist. And as I’m standing there, watching my daughters running around barefoot in my mom’s yard, enthusiastically giving their grandmother’s plants golden showers with a green watering can named Towa, I think to myself that maybe this is the best environmental education they could ever wish for.
Scandinavian Parenting Tip #4
The best way to raise an eco-conscious child is to be an eco-conscious parent. Live by the principle of the three R’s—reduce, reuse, recycle—and involve your child in the process. Talk about how your personal choices can impact the environment and look for opportunities to make a difference—for example, by volunteering for cleanup days at a nearby park, using public transit or riding your bike instead of taking the car, and shopping for organic, locally grown food.
Suggested reading: Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education, by David Sobel. Orion Society, 1999.
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A LITTLE DIRT WON’T HURT (NOR WILL A LITTLE RAIN)
Why go inside when it rains? That’s when the mud makes the best globs.
—SWEDISH OUTDOOR ASSOCIATION
By springtime, keeping track of Maya’s social calendar has turned into a part-time job. She has had more playdates in three months than she had in her entire life before we came here, and she uses my cell phone to set them up herself. To my surprise, the Shack soon becomes a popular meeting spot for the kids in Maya’s class. I didn’t think we had much to offer, just a tiny old house with no more entertainment than what the girls had brought with them from the US—a few coloring books, a box of crayons, a pile of books, and as many stuffed animals as they could squeeze into their carry-on luggage. Still, the kids keep coming. Unless it’s pouring down rain, they’re out the door within a few minutes of getting home on most days, even though they’ve already been outside for several hours at school and fritids. If they’re not playing with the neighbor’s dogs or petting the horses that are grazing behind the Shack, they’re climbing trees or playing in the woods nearby.
At one point, I have as many as six of them running around outside. There, it seems like both gender and age barriers are shattered. Often, boys and girls play together, and Nora, who is four years younger than most of them, is keeping up with them all. Sometimes they gravitate more toward games with rules, like chasing games and soccer, other times rough-and-tumble play. Other times they collect things, like slugs, flies, or other bugs, and build habitats for them. (At one point a few of the girls even create an insect club at school and spend every recess period “rescuing” injured bugs, which they name after the big soccer players, like Messi, Ronaldo, and Neymar, then negotiate custody over them and bring them home.) Often they delve into imaginative play, pretending that they’re singers puttin
g on a concert one minute, riders taking their horses into the woods the next. Theoretically, at their age, they’re well past their peak for imaginative play, but of this I don’t see any evidence.
“We’re pretending that Milton is a thief who stole our horses, and now he’s going to poison them,” Maya explains one day when I ask her what happened to the classmate that she had brought home from school, since I hadn’t seen him for a while. (As it turns out, Milton has been jailed indefinitely under the climbing tree, charged with said attempted horse theft and poisoning.) Or, as I casually try to strike up a conversation in the unusually quiet car on the way home from school one day: “Ssshhh, Mom! We can’t talk right now: we’re horses riding in a trailer, we’re on our way to a race.”
Back in Indiana I had always been the one orchestrating outdoor play as soon as the girls got home in the afternoon, trying to entice them with sidewalk chalk, creek investigations, and picnics at the park. Some days it didn’t matter how hard I tried; they still weren’t up for it. It may also have been a result of the inevitable Law of Parenting: The more I wanted them to go outside, the more they dug their heels in. I don’t know how many times Maya and Nora had dissed my suggestion that they build a fort in the woods behind our house. Here in Sweden they come and ask for my help to make one, and often spend time playing in it in the evenings. For the first time, they will spontaneously stay out and play for hours, and I’m the one saying no when they want to go back outside after dinner.
Something has happened and I think I know what it is. I was a good enough playmate for them for years, but what they needed was other children to inspire them. In Sweden, we find a rich culture of outdoor play, and it is upheld through an unspoken agreement among the parents.
There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather Page 14