One task a month
Sam Goldscheider
Orchestras Manager at the Verbier Festival
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Europe
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Forests, especially those in Scandinavia
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Mushrooms (even the poisonous ones!), cats, snails
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Committing to taking on one task a month gets you into action, and having free reign to choose whatever you like allows your creative juices to flow.
October 2024
Task taken on:
In an effort to spend more time in nature and study its diversity closer, I’m spending some time this month getting to know wild mushrooms - I have two books and I’m going to the forest and trying to work out which mushroom is which :)
Task completed?
May 2024
Task taken on:
This month I'm going to take the train between Stockholm and London; I'm going to take advantage of the long journey and stay with friends on the way!
Task completed?
April 2024
Task taken on:
Try to buy and eat only fruits and vegetables that are in season in northern Europe (this won’t be very easy given spring is only just starting…)
Task completed?
Kind of… there isn’t so much “in-season” in Sweden in April. Winter is finishing (not much grows during winter!) and spring is nearly starting. I bought some butternut squash (they are “in-season” in autumn, but they keep well over winter), asparagus from Germany, potatoes, leek, carrots, salad… otherwise I also ate pickled vegetables. I stayed a couple of nights in a hotel in Oslo and noticed how at breakfast they always have cucumber, tomatoes and peppers, and melon - all year round! I wonder how we can persuade hotels that they can also try to offer fruit and vegetables “in-season”...
March 2024
Task taken on and completed:
I was the Tour Manager for the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra’s 16 day tour in China. There are a couple of “green” things I tried to do:
-we didn’t take any internal flights, although the local orgnaiser originally wanted to book two of these for us. We took the train instead - I was happy to see the musicians enjoyed this option, and happy to see that the promoter organised this alternative for us. I asked the promoter if other orchestras also ask to take the train - they said that often the orchestra just does what the promoter suggests. Hopefully in the future more orchestras will make a point of taking the train instead of flying.
-I spoke to a few Chinese people in the organiser’s team about cutting down on meat consumption. Most Chinese people seem to eat meat at all meals - so this was an interesting conversation to have! I think they understood and respected the idea, and perhaps they’ll even think about doing it a little in their own lives.
February 2024
Task taken on:
I’m staying in Colombia for a couple of months, and I’m going to talk to as many people as possible about the effects on the climate of eating meat, especially beef.
Completed?
Meat is always served with meals - and there are a lot of cows in Colombia! That’s because the climate allows for this - there’s grass all year round (no winter…), so you see cows everywhere.
I didn’t find that many people were receptive to the idea of cutting down meat consumption in order to help the climate. One of the big issues I find is that people think that there are only 2 options: 1) being “normal” (which they see as eating meat every day) or 2) being “vegan” (never eating meat). The second option scares most people - so they don’t really do anything. I tried to make people aware that there’s a third option: cutting down a little on meat consumption each week. It’s definitely a conversation I’ll continue having - always bearing in mind that people need a lot of time to be able to implement change in their lives.
January 2024
Task taken on:
Tell 3 people about Ecosia (the search engine which plants trees with the money it makes!).
Completed?
Yes - I told quite a few people (family, friends, colleagues) and it was always interesting to see the wide variety of reactions. Some people don’t seem that touched by the idea. Others think it’s a good idea but don’t seem that interested in using it. And others seem interested, but I’m not sure if they really start using it (it seems our habits of using the services we already know (Google) are deeply engrained…). I’ll take on this task another month as I really believe in the Ecosia idea :)
December 2023
Task taken on:
Find secondhand presents to buy others for Christmas, and encourage those that I know would like to buy something for me to do the same.
Completed?
Yes! Amongst the adults in our family we decided to not buy each other presents, and instead only buy for children. So I went to Oxfam and bought only presents from there :)
November 2023
Task taken on:
This month I’d like to learn more about the negative effects of fireworks (there will be Fireworks Night in the UK on 5 November, and Diwali on 12 November). I’m going to try and read some articles on the subject and then talk to the people around me so that more people know about how bad fireworks are for animals and the environment.
Completed?
I read a lot about it but I didn’t talk to enough people about it. I’ll try to do this again in December, parcitularly to encourage people not to use fireworks on New Year’s Eve.
This article gave me a lot of information about how bad fireworks are for the planet.
Fireworks release a host of contaminants that affect air quality and can contribute to climate change, including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen, sulphur dioxide, and particulate matter.
During the five-day celebration of Diwali in India – the world-famous festival of lights – about 50,000 tons, or 100 million pounds, of fireworks explode, causing a toxic haze to cover cities.
According to the Humane Society of the United States, animals “become … frightened by the noise and commotion of fireworks,” resulting in them becoming lost, abandoning their habitats, and suffering from health consequences, whether it be stress or getting hit by a vehicle.
October 2023
Task taken on:
Develop the Strings4All campaign on Harmonic Progression by making boxes that concert halls can put backstage in order to collect used strings.
Completed?
Yes! There were two parts to the process:
Finding the right boxes
I went to a few local shops in London to try and find some boxes, but it turned out impossible to find the right sizes, or at least boxes that didn’t have lots of writing on them. So I turned to the internet, and spent quite a bit of time searching on there - in the end I found the boxes pictured below (they’re both made from at least 75% recycled material).
I have to cut a slit into each box so that people can easily deposit their strings - that takes a while to get straight!
Stickers
I spent even longer trying to find eco-friendly stickers… I wrote to a lot of different online sticker companies to ask them whether they had an environmental policy in place. I thought that was a good exercise because it showed the companies that customers are interested in buying eco-friendly products; if more of us do this, hopefully even companies who aren’t interested yet will realise that it makes sense to head in that direction. Anyway, I found a company which had a very detailed page about sustainability on their website (https://www.avery.co.uk/blog/eco-friendly-labels-and-stickers-top-10-questions-and-answers) so I bought their “Recycled paper” stickers. I have to say that I think the stickers look really good 😊
September 2023
Task taken on:
Spend more time in the garden learning about plants, bushes and trees I don’t know.
Completed?
Yes! I spent a lot of time in the garden, using an app called “Picture this” to learn about which plants/bushes/trees were which. You just take a picture and the app gives you tonnes of information (name/description/how to take care of it/history etc.).
I moved 15 wild raspberries from behind a fence to a sunny place in the garden (picture below)! They’ll spend the winter developing their roots, and then hopefully shoot up in spring and summer. I may have to wait 2 years for berries, but we’ll see. They may not even get that far…
August 2023
Task taken on:
Try to buy from local shops in London rather than big supermarkets.
Completed?
Yes and no… I stayed with my parents, and they shop mainly at supermarkets, so it was hard to avoid them. But I did go to the local corner shop and found nice beers and oat milk :) and I found an amazing bakery based in Hackney (https://e5bakehouse.com/) but which sells its bread to other shops in London.
July 2023
Task taken on:
Take part in the Verbier Festival Forest project. The local community has given a part of the forest near Verbier to the Festival, and we are organising a tree-planting outing with musicians.
Completed?
Yes! The outing was a huge success - musicians and their families came and we spent two hours planting 200 trees. For many people it was their first time planting trees so we all learnt a lot, and we enjoyed being away from the busy festival life for a few hours.
June 2023
Task taken on:
Continue my task from May - spend more time with and in nature, especially in Switzerland where I’m staying this month.
Completed?
I didn’t spend nearly as much time as I would have liked in nature - June is always a very busy month for me as I’m preparing the Verbier Festival in July. But I did spend a bit of time by lake Geneva, which is always very calming for the soul :)
May 2023
Task taken on:
Get closer to nature - this month I’m going to make a big effort to spend more time in the forest close to where I’m staying in Stockholm, and I’m going to observe what’s going on there more closely. I’m also going to try and understand why some things happen (for example, I’ve seen a lot of fallen branches on the ground the last week - why are they falling? Is it after winter?).
Completed?
Yes! It was great to reconnect with nature by spending time in the local forest. After busy days on the computer, the calm and lightness of the forest was relaxing. Humans suffer from a lot of internal problems (anxiety, negative chatter in the mind, worrying about what’s happened or what will happen…) - on the other hand, it didn’t seem the trees were so fussed about how they look, what other trees think of them, or what might happen tomorrow… considering these differences between trees and humans made me wonder whether it’s possible for us to calm down and worry less, like the trees seem to do. Sometimes that happened to me - and I felt like I was becoming more like a tree :)
April 2023
Task taken on:
To continue to not buy from big supermarkets and support smaller shops instead, which will be made harder by the fact I will spend half the month in the outskirts of Stockholm, where it is very difficult to find local shops which sell organic products. Even though Sweden has the reputation of being sustainable (which, from my experience of spending a lot of time there, isn’t true at all), supermarkets are even more prominent than in other countries and people do not seem to have the culture of trying to support local, small shops.
Completed?
As I suspected, this task was really hard to do, especially in the outskirts of Stockholm (to be precise, Fisksätra). The local shopping centre has 2 shops: a middle-Eastern shop, and a supermarket (ICA). The middle-Eastern shop had hardly any products from Sweden, and only 1 product that was organic. I tried to not go to the supermarket, but I had to one day. There are more options in the centre of Stockholm, but not many. It seems the Swedes, in general, support the big supermarket chains.
Luckily we went on a trip to Järna (45 minutes from Sweden) and there I found a local, organic shop, which had loads of great products, and many of them from Sweden (although they had a lot of imported products too), so I could stock up there :)
March 2023
Task taken on:
To not buy anything from big supermarkets and go to small local shops instead. Although there are a lot of small shops in the area (Vevey, Switzerland), this will still be hard because I’m so used to going to the supermarkets for certain products.
Completed?
Yes - and I really enjoyed it! It felt great to support smaller shops. I also enjoyed talking to the people working there - supermarkets feel far less impersonal. Supermarkets are far too powerful and we need to spread this power among more companies.
February 2023
Task taken on:
Tell 3 people about Ecosia (the search engine that plants trees with the money it makes (instead of Google, which follows a business model that’s sole interest is to make people rich)).
Completed?
Yes - I told these people about it:
my French teacher, who had never heard of it but loved the idea and said he’d tell his friends (he’s from Burundi (Africa) and now lives in Uganda). He says he can see how badly climate change is affecting the continent and how helpful trees are.
a colleague at work, who vaguely knew about it and didn’t seem that convinced
another colleague at work who said that he’s been meaning to use it but hasn’t made the (basic) change yet. I’ll remind him and hopefully he’ll start using it
I also talked to other people about it and was often met with reluctance because it’s not as great as Google at finding what you’re looking for. I stick with Ecosia because I love the idea and I don’t mind having to spend more time searching. I’m happy to make this ‘sacrifice’. But it seems that our society’s addiction with speed and efficiency means that even those who understand that Ecosia is a good thing aren’t always willing to make a personal sacrifice.
January 2023
Task taken on:
I will repeat the task I took on in November 2022 - take 1 walk this month with a bin bag and pick up the litter I find on my way.
Completed?
No, unfortunately I didn’t manage to get it done this month. I procrastinated and then suddenly it was the end of the month… I will take on this task again later this year.
December 2022
Task taken on:
Find one environmental organisation in Colombia (where I’ll be in December and January), and read about what they do and see if I can help them at all, or learn from them.
Completed?
Yes - I read about this inspiring project:
A grass-roots, community initiative in a very poor district of Bogota which is located right next to the landfill site where 6,400 tonnes of waste are sent every day. Living next to the landfill is, as you can imagine, difficult - many trucks pass through in order to dump the waste in the landfill, the waste smells, there are many animals around etc. So the community is trying to inspire people to seperate organic waste from the rest of their waste, and send that organic waste to a facility (so, not the landfill) which converts it into soil or fertiliser which local farmers can then buy. So far they have organised a collection for 850 houses in the area, and they have built the first facility in Bogota which converts organic waste into soil and fertiliser. It’s inspiring to see how dedicated they are - read more here.
November 2022
Task taken on:
Take 1 walk this month with a bin bag and pick up the litter I find on my way
Completed?
Yes! I went for a walk with my parents and picked up litter on the way. It was a good experience - many people on the way noticed that I was doing it and thanked me. I’m sure some of them will think about doing it themselves, or at least think about not littering in these beautiful natural spaces.
October 2022
Task taken on:
Eat cheese 3 times a week rather than every day. This will be hard because I’m a vegetarian, and I spend a lot of time in Switzerland, where the cheese is very tasty…
Completed?
Some weeks, yes, other weeks, no. It was hard because I was in Switzerland and Germany for a lot of the month, often staying as a guest in someone’s house (so it’s hard to choose what to eat). But I found a great vegan cheese company in Switzerland called New Roots (https://www.newroots.ch/en/#). They are trying to make products that don’t harm animals and that are sustainable. They only use organic ingredients, with no additives, and the “cheese” is really tasty! This made things easier. They write “It is estimated that our plant-based cheese has an environmental impact 10 times lower than animal cheese.”
Here are a couple of pictures of the things I bought:
September 2022
Task taken on:
When staying with my family in Kingsbury (an area in London, UK), try to buy from local shops instead of a big supermarkets.
Completed?
Kind of; I did not do it as much as I would like, but I did manage to find a shop called “Health First” (644 Kingsbury Rd, Kingsbury Circle, London NW9 9HN, United Kingdom), where I bought some vegan cheese, spices and other things, but they unfortunately didn’t have many fresh products. I ended up going to Aldi next door to buy organic eggs.
That same day, I needed to buy some medication so I chose to buy that in a small pharmacy rather than going to the “Boots” shop, which is a big chain in the UK.
August 2022
Task taken on:
Travel from Stockholm (Sweden) to Angers (France), instead of flying.
Completed?
Yes! Melissa (my girlfriend) and I travelled by train. We left on a Tuesday and arrived 48 hours later. We took the following journey:
Stockholm to Hamburg, overnight train leaving at 16h00 and arriving the next day at 05h31. We paid a little extra for beds in a shared compartment, instead of just sitting on seats the whole time. We were given a compartment with an older couple who were heading by train to the Czech Republic. Sharing a compartment was fun because we spoke a lot with the other couple, and we could also look after each other’s belongings when they or we went walking in the train, or in a station (for example, we had a 1 hour stop in Malmö, so we went walking around the station to stretch our legs).
From Hamburg we took a train to Karlsruhe (Germany); we left at 05h54 and arrived at 11h03.
From Karlsruhe we took a train to Paris; we left at 11h30 and arrived at 14h00. We stayed in Paris for 1 night with a friend; it was great to see him and we were grateful to have a bed which was not moving :)
The next day, we had the morning free in Paris, and left the city on a train at 14h32 and arrived in Angers at 16h10. The trains in France are very fast (we went 310km/h at one point!).
Overall the journey was tiring but much more interesting and fun than flying. It was an adventure! In total the trains cost:
150 euros for both of us on the night train from Stockholm to Hamburg
62 euros for the train from Hamburg to Paris (for Sam), and free from Melissa! This is because we travel by train often and we collect points on the Deutsche Bahn (German train system) website. We used Melissa’s points to get a free train ticket.
60 euros for both of us for the train from Paris to Angers.
July 2022
Task taken on:
Organise a vegan breakfast event for the staff, musicians, and volunteers at the Verbier Festival (where I work).
Completed?
Yes! The Orchestras Team (the team in which I work) organised 2 free vegan breakfasts, the first on 19 July and the second on 27 July. Around 80 people came to each breakfast.
The aim was simple: We wanted to show people that there is protein in plant-based foods. Lots of people are scared to stop eating meat because they think they won’t get any protein – they aren’t aware of how much protein can be found in vegan food.
The concept was also simple: On a long table we set out 2 different types of porridge, a big bowl of fruit, lots of different nuts and seeds (which have a lot of protein), and some vegan chocolate chips – in total there were about 20 different things to choose from.
In front of each item was a piece of paper which told participants how much protein they would get if they took a spoon full. For example, it said that a small spoon of walnuts had 2grams of protein.
Everyone then went along the table with their bowl and took what they wanted – counting how much protein they were taking as they went. At the end of the table, they wrote their name and how much protein they had in their bowl on a piece of paper.
It was a big success!
June 2022
Task taken on:
Taking the train from Stockholm (Sweden), to Vevey (Switzerland), instead of flying.
Completed?
Yes! The train journey normally takes 27 hours, so in order to make it easier, I first took the train to Düsseldorf and stayed there with friends for one night. Not only did this break up the journey, but it also meant I caught up with friends on the way! The train journeys were as follows:
Stockholm to Hamburg
Hamburg to Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf to Basel
Basel to Bern
Bern to Lausanne
Lausanne to Vevey
Because I booked the tickets 1 month in advance, they were no more expensive than flying! The train cost 120 euros.
May 2022
Task taken on:
To read one article a week on the French website Reporterre https://reporterre.net/, an independent news channel about ecology.
Completed?
Not really, unfortunately I only managed to read 2 articles in the whole month – I wasn’t very disciplined and got side-tracked reading the Guardian…
April 2022
Task taken on:
Continue to work on the “Plant” project in my apartment building. Hopefully I will be able to inspire my neighbours to help me in planting flowers and vegetables in these areas of the building which are lifeless.
Completed?
Yes! One neighbour liked the idea of the plant project so we spent a couple of hours one Sunday planting seeds and small flowers – they’re doing very well! One of the pots (the one on the left) is filled with a mix of flowers that bees love, the other has 2 physalis and 2 dill plants. Now that other neighbours have seen the plants growing, they want to get involved too, so we’re going to do another planting day soon.
March 2022
Task taken on:
Change my bank in order to use a sustainable bank which supports companies that are doing good things for the planet, instead of a bank which invests in fossil fuels, weapons or other things which are bad for people and the planet.
Completed?
Yes! I managed to change to the “Swiss alternative bank” (https://www.bas.ch/fr), which is an environmentally-friendly bank. They are very careful with regard to whom they take money from and how they lend or invest money.
February 2022
Task taken on:
Plan how to implement a project in the apartment building I live in Switzerland to inspire my neighbours to grow plants and vegetables in the common areas of the building.
Completed?
Yes! Our apartment building has a Facebook group, so I posted about my idea to plant flowers and vegetables around the building in order to give back to nature there – other than my girlfriend, only 1 person reacted. It’s hard sometimes to start initiatives when not many people react – but I will continue the task in April and see what happens!
