Category: Sustainability comics

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Autobiographical comics Comics Sustainability comics Working in research

Traveling by land, Germany to Italy and back!

“Germany? What do you mean Germany, H-P, you’re Finnish?” Yes, I am, but I only started drawing since leaving Germany. Last summer I went to Trento Italy for an ethnography and qualitative research conference together with my colleagues Juulia and Carmen. I traveled through Berlin where I also met a long time Instagram friend! I made this comic during the long train rides and I first published it on my Patreon for backers only. Now it’s been a while since that happened, so I decided to make it public.

I think people are interested in doing longer travels by land, but they might be worried if it’s really difficult. And yes, it is more difficult than flying. But it’s also amazing and exciting and relaxing and part of the whole experience of traveling! So maybe this comic can inspire you to try out something other than a plane next time you travel.

The reason I’m posting this comic now is that I’m leaving to Angoulême in France tomorrow! And I’ll be traveling by land again! That reminded me of this comic. I don’t know if I will draw a travel diary this time, but I’m thinking about it. I’m traveling together with a friend of mine, the Finnish comics artist Siiri Viljakka.

These two photos are taken from a moving train! That’s Alps! Incredible.
This is a river from Trento in Italy. We took a cable car from where the photo was taken to that building you can see on top of the mountain!

This photo was taken from the mountain where we got to with the cable car. I had thought Trento to be way smaller of a town than what it turned out to be! It was weird seeing it all laid out like that. The size of the mountains is something I as a Finnish person will never understand. (We have no mountains in Finland. I even happen to be from an area of Finland that’s the former sea floor! Osthrobothnia that is.)

Wouldn’t you like to study here? Well I did! This is the courtyard of the Trento public library. I went here to work on my university stuff.

Now that I’m traveling in January, the views will be completely different from what they were in June. Our route takes us from Stockholm (Sweden) to Copenhagen (Denmark) to Strasbourg (France) and then finally to Angoulême (France) to attend the gigantic comics festival held there every year! I’ll try to at least write a blog post about it, even if I wouldn’t necessarily draw a comic. We’ll see!

Now that you’re here, consider this. You become my Patreon backer, I make more comics! Sounds great, right? Here you go:

Support me on patreon

Are you into reading more comics? Check out all of the comics I’ve posted on my blog here on my Comics tag!

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Comics Sustainability comics

How to Be a Conscious Consumer? You can’t.

You have probably read about a million articles on how to be a conscious consumer. I have too, we all have. But I have come to the realization that this whole conscious consumer thing is a hoax and a lie. If you think we can be wasteful or not be wasteful, but being a conscious consumer will not save the world, you’re absolutely right! Unfortunately media wants to tell us that with small changes we can change the world.

I love small changes, my whole blog is filled with small changes! But I don’t believe those will change the world if we don’t also make big political changes. This is why I made this comic.

Title: I don't give a flying f**k about being a conscious consumer. Let me explain why. Image: H-P, a bald man in a green sweater is smiling a forced smile spreading his hands. This is clrearly not a how to be a conscious consumer comic.
Panel 1: Text: Our system is broken. It wants consumers to make a change, yet make it almost impossible. Image: H-P is looking at things in sale in a store. He looks worried. The things in sale have ads that say: Made by hand from dead kittens! $3,99. Made in USA from Puppies we killed, $2,45. Good people buy brand X, $1,09. Panel 2: Text: I'm not interested in that. Image: H-P looks at the reader looking angry. Panel 3: Text: I'm interested in changing the system. Image: H-P has a sly expression, he smiles, he touches his forehead like he just got an idea.
This page has two timelines. Timeline 1: Text: Here's an example. Right now I produce about 11kg of food waste a year. To reduce waste, I can compost it all in my own home. Working like this for 10 years I reduce 110kg of waste! Images: H-P first looks at a sack on waste sadly, he then puts it in bokashi compost, then he stands proudly next to 110kg of ready made compost! Timeline 2: Text: One pupil produces 0,10kg of food waste every day. A school of 600 students produces 1140kg of food waste every year. I work towards a policy change that leftover food is redistributed, thus reducing the food waste by 50%. I have reduced 570kg of waste every year. Images: A student's plate is almost empty, but there's 0,10kg of things they don't want to eat on it. A school cafeteria lady then takes a huge wheelbarrow full of waste on already big pile of waste. Then the lunchlady suddenly changes, she's now giving the food to a man who has a beard and his clothes are a bit broken. They both look happy.
Panel 1: Text: It would take me over 50 years of composting to come even close to the impact one school has in a year! Image: H-P has grown old. He has a bald head and the sides are growing long grey hair. He also has long grey beard and he's missing a few teeth. Panel 2: Text: Even if it would take me 10 years to get the policy change to get through, it's absolutely worth it! Image: H-P looks at calendar pages. They start from 2013 and they all have red crosses on them, expect the last one from year 2022 that says DONE and has a green chack mark on it.
Panel 1: Text: It's time to stop obsessing over our performative #zerowastelifestyles Image: H-P has a red shirt that says Brand X. He's in front of a video camera and he's holding a tube that says Eco-deo. He's clearly filming a conscious consumer ad. Panel 2. Text: Frankly that's (picture of a bull taking a dump) designed to make us feel like we're doing something when we're only using our limited time so we can't do what we actually need to do... Image: H-P is looking at his phone very nervously, he's sweating a lot.
One big image! Big text: We need to become politically active!!! Small text: Voting is a start. But it's not nearly enough. Image: H'P looks feral. His teeth are sharp and his eyes have no pupils. He's sliding a vote into a voting ballot box.
Panel 1: Text: Search for a small local environmental/leftist organizations. Join them! Image: H-P is walking towards people who are holding hands. He's waving at them. First in the line of people is a man with dapper style and a leather jacket who extends his hand to H-P. Next to him is a woman in traditional Finnish Roma dress, next to her is a woman with afro hair and casual shirt, hoop earrings, scarf around her neck and jeans. Next to her is an older balding man in a suit jacket and sweater. Panel 2: Text: Offer your skills! That's how I did it! Uhh, hello! I have no idea if I'm in the right place, but I can draw comics and comics are a really good way to make information accessible! If you have any ideas on how my skills could help you out, please let me know! Image: H-P is holding comics in his hand. He looks very nervous but he smiles. He's also shaking a bit. He's talking to a long haired woman and a man with glasses. Both people smile gently at him.
Panel 1: Text: When I first joined the Left Alliance of Vantaa I knew nothing! It's okay to just go in to learn first. I sat through a dozen zoom meetings just listening and learning before I said anything. Image: H-P is sitting in front of a computer, he's wearing a pair of headphones. There's a zoom conference going on on the screen. Panel 2: Text: Climate is in crisis! Start actively learning about local politics and activism now and stop pretending that buying a reusable straw will make any actual difference. Image: H-P looks very tired as he drinks something with a reusable metal straw.

When I first posted this comic on Twitter and Instagram, many people misunderstood my point. So let’s make this VERY clear. I am not saying this so that you can think “Okay, so the small things I do don’t matter, better just buy a big car, a big house and use as much energy and resources as I can! YOLO!” I am saying this because we shouldn’t be obsessing over the small details.

Did the climate activist eat imported soy? Who cares, they are trying to make bigger changes happen! Did the environmentally conscious politician wear fast fashion, that means nothing if they manage to stop big corporations from dumping waste water into our lakes! Are you watching people, trying to see their mistakes like this? You are wasting your time. Instead of making one person feel bad for what they eat, you can spend your time to get an office full of people change their morning lattes to oat lattes.

tl;dr

If you absolutely have to police someone, police yourself or police big corporations. Individual activists policing each other will not further our cause for a more sustainable world.

Categories
Alt Text Included Comics Sustainability comics

Zero Waste comic, frugal ways to be sustainable!

Zero waste lifestyle can most of the times be pretty inaccessible for low income people. But in reality the low income people are already living a zero waste lifestyle like no tomorrow! This zero waste comic is about just that. An anti-capitalist look into the lifestyle and it’s problems.

Cover of zero waste comic. Title: Not #ZeroWaste, I Just Grew Up Poor Picture: H-P is sitting on a box drinking tea, looking annoyed. Behind him there's a compost bin, a broom, plants on a shelf and clothes on a drying rack.

I made this comic back in 2019 still being quite new to the zero waste idea. I have lived frugally and quite sustainably all my life. It hasn’t always been because of my sustainable life values. Mostly it’s been due to my working class background.

For some time I had to take the comic off of the internet, because the platform I used for my web shop started doing crypto/NFT business. I don’t condone that, as that is absolutely not sustainable! But now I have finally added the comic back online, this time on itch.io! You can get it here:

And here are some preview pages if you feel like you’re not sure if it’s a good purchase yet:

Text: Poor person's 1st lesson I don't throw away anything without thinking it throug first Image: H-P holds a t-shirt and thinks Text in thought bubbles: Can I reuse this? Can I repurpose the material myself? Can I give it to someone who uses it? Text: and if none of those work: Can I recycle it? And now if that doesn't work either, it's going to the normal trash bin in your home. Big text: But wait! There's more! Image: H-P peeking into the page from outside of it's borders. He looks bewildered. Text: There's a better step! My personal favorite! It starts before I even buy anything new!
Image: H-P is squatting, holding pants and looking at their manufacturing information and washing info. Text in thought bubbles: I need a new pair of pants... What fabric is this? Will it last long? Can I buy it second hand? Can I ask my friends if they have extras they don't need? Big text: Point being: I think before I buy! Text: Fun fact (not fun at all, very sad) Pants are a very bad example because the fashion industry is horrible and nowadays it's cheaper to just buy 5 pairs of pants that break easily than one pair that lasts 5 times longer. Let's not get into this too much though, this is only a mere reminder to smash capitalism asap. I don't buy much from general stores anymore. All of my clothes are second hand, but yes, I own pants from a certain swedish brand that has a name that consists of two letters.

Actually… Why wouldn’t you think it’s a good purchase? It’s absolutely free! You can of course leave me a tip (and I’d really love if you could), but that’s not mandatory.

Maybe one more page to really convince you this is the zero waste comic of your dreams!

Text: I use baking soda and vinegar to clean basically anything. It's good for the environment and I happen to have a lot of allergies so those are great options for me! I don't get allergic reactions from them! Image: H-P kneeling on the floor with a rag, vinegar bottle and a jar of baking soda. text: So what do I wash with them!? Image: Overflowing laundry basket Text: Laundry (baking soda to wash, vinegar to rinse) but only if they're not that dirty. I still use normal washing powder for more dirty clothes. Image: Shining clean oventop and kitchen side table text: cleaning surfaces (baking soda with water) Image: two jars. one of them has baking soda in the bottom with lid closed. One has no lid and a horrifying ghost shaped odor cloud emerges from it. text: Getting rid of smells (just put baking soda in it and wait) Image: H-P has a pencil in his hand, he looks like he just finished drawing the two jars. he says text: and everything else too. I'm not gonna draw it out, just believe me. Why did I even start drawing these!?

This comic has gotten some raving reviews! Such as this one:

“However, it uses a lot of space to blame environmental distress on politics and ostracize viewpoints.”

3 star review on Goodreads

If that’s not what you want to see, don’t read it. The book is first and foremost about the political change we need to both help the planet and make life fair to low income people. I wouldn’t name a comic “Not #ZeroWaste, I Just Grew Up Poor” if it wasn’t about the unfair resources we all have. A general happy zero waste comic isn’t titled like that.

Other zero waste comics?

If you like this type of content, I suggest you go read my newest adventures in sustainable living, meaning my No Buy Year -comics! Yes, you heard that right, I’m not buying stuff for a whole year.

Ps. Despite these pages on this blog post having alt texts, the comic PDF is old and doesn’t have those. So it’s not readable with any kind of a screen reading device.

Categories
Alt Text Included Comics Sustainability comics

Infinite basil! How to grow it?

I think I’ve seen like a million Youtube videos with this title. But guess why there is so many videos on this subject? Because it is that easy to grow infinite basil! If you’re a beginner in any kind of plant related sheningans, basil is the way to go. Here’s a comic that will show you what to do!

Lifehack Never buy basil again! H-P in a green basil colored shirt peeks into the image looking worried, he corrects himself "No, wait! That came out wring. The hack isn't to forget about basil. Let me explain."
H-P holds a small pot of basil. Now his eyes are green like basil too! He says "What I was meant to say was "buy basil only once and then grow more basil from that"!"
Here's how! You need grocery store basil and something to cut it with. In the illustration you can see basil pot and scissors.
Next you see an illustration that shows a basil stem with 5 layers of leaves. The stem has been cut so that only one set of leaves remain. Text says "Cut the basil from here. Leave some leaves on the original plant too. That way you can make that grow bigger too!"
Strip off most of the basil leaves. Only leave like 2 big ones and any small ones on top of those two. The illustration shows a very tiny green haired H-P eating a basil leaf the size on his head. An arrow points to the leaf, it says "Eat these."
An illustration of a store bought basil that has now been cut very short. All the short stems still have one or two leaves left. Text says: You can also grow this one! Just transfer it to some better soil, because this is probably just filled with roots and has no nutrients left for the plant.
This picture has a glass jar with two basil cuttings that only have a couple of leaves at the top. A plastic bag is placed over them and there's a picture of scissors next to this all. Text says: Then just pop the basil cuttings into some water and put a plastic bag over them! Remember to cut holes on the bag, so they can breathe. They'll probably grow roots without the bag too. I've tried and it worked well, it was just slower.
Now we see an illustration os a basil cutting that has grown roots at the end of the stem. H-P looks at it lovingly. His speech bubble is even heart shaped. He says: "Now wait for roots! (about 1-2 weeks)"
In the last image we see the infinite basil plant planted on a new pot. H-P is very tiny and green. He holds a gardening shovel that's bigger than himself. He says "When the basil has roots, just plant it into some soil and water it!"

And that’s how you grow infinite basil! When your newly planted Basil plant becomes big enough, you can just start the process all over again. Basil is a great plant for this, because it grows roots very easily, but if you’re not a lover of basil, you can try other similar-ish herbs too! One of the easiest ones is mint! Mint is very aggressive when it comes to spreading. In our kitchen the mint had actually hopped onto the basil pot right next to it’s own pot! It had just grown one very long stem and then developed roots at the end of that stem so that it can root into the basil’s pot!

If you want to read more comics about gardening tips, check out this post where I tell how to grow plants from the fruits you eat!

At the end of this post I’d like to remind you that you can join my mailing list. I email people once every other month about things relevant to my comics. No affiliate marketing or other unnecessary consumerism!

And again, big thank you to my Patreon backers, who make free comics like this possible!

Categories
Comics Sustainability comics

Grow plants from the fruit you eat!

Did you know that you can grown plants from the fruit you eat? Neat! It’s an absolutely useless hobby, because many of the plants won’t bear fruit like that, but oh boy is it fun! (That wasn’t a question. It IS fun!) Here’s a comic that shows you how to start germinating fruit seeds!

H-P is eating a kiwi fruit. He thinks: My life is sad and empty. I wish I had more plants to fill it with.
H-P looks excitedly at the fruit and yells: A KIWI!
H-P is poking the kiwi with a toothpick and thinks: Dig out a handfull of seeds from the kiwi with a toothpick. You can still eat the rest of the kiwi. Don't waste food!
Text: Now give the seeds a quick wash! When they're in the bucket of water, check which seeds sink to the bottom and which float. The seeds that sink are the seeds that are good to go. throw out the floating seeds, they won't work. Illustration has a bowl of water with some seds floating and some on the bottom.
Text: Now put several of the seeds into some soil. Plant them about 1-2cm apart. Don't worry about putting too many in at this point. They might not all germinate. Illustration of a seed being thrown into a pot with soil.
Text: Now put a plastic wrap on top of it and poke some holes on it for ventilation. Keep the pot in a warm place and keep the soil moist. Not soaking wet! Just moist. Secret tip: If you don't have plastic wrap, don't go buy new plastic! Any clear plastic will do fine. Your own trash might have some. Illustration of a pot with plastic on it.
Text: When the seeds germinate, pretend it's hunger games and weed out the weak ones. If you leave them in, they'll suffocate the strong ones too. Leave about 3 of the biggest ones! They are the winners! Illustration of a hand coming to pick out the smallest plant that yells "Nooooo!"
Illustration of an old H-P in hotpants and a very long beard. He is still very cool and sexy, despite his old age. He is holding a pot with a plant. He thinks: And now water it regularly, keep it in a sunny place and wait for the next 100 years... it's bigger than before.

This same trick works for a lot of plants! We have grown some citrus plants and an avocado too! Avocado seed is way bigger, so search for some tips that are especially for avocados. This kiwi tip isn’t as good for them, so to start germinating fruit seeds from all kinds of fruits, you might need some extra information.

Best fruit to grow!

Like said, most of the plants just won’t bear fruit, but there are some that will! My favorite one being tomato! Some tomato plants are genetically altered in a way, that their seeds are dead, but some aren’t. If you want to have a higher chance of actually getting your tomato seeds to germinate, buy an organic tomato instead of a regular one. It also helps if you buy tomatoes that are grown locally. That way you know the same breed of tomatoes has been able to survive in your area before too!

Here’s also a special tip for tomatoes. Tomato seeds have this… film, a weird slimy surface that can actually prevent them from germinating! But there’s a simple way to get it off. Suck the seed. Just put the seed in your mouth and suck it for a while! Your saliva will melt the film! Besides, the film just tastes like tomato, so this isn’t disgusting to do (except if you think tomatoes are disgusting… but why are you trying to grow tomatoes if you think so?).

Try it out!

Best part about growing plants from the seed is that you can try out basically anything. Worst outcome is that nothing happens. Best outcome is a beautiful plant! Okay… even worse outcome would be to spend a ton of money and THEN nothing happens. I’d hate that. So that’s why getting seeds from the fruit you eat is amazing!

If you like the comics and tips I post here, I suggest you to join my mailing list. That way you know what I’m up to when it comes to comics!

Also big thanks to my Patreon backers! Alongside them getting the access to exclusive comics, they also make this blog possible! So if you’re reading this and you aren’t a Patreon backer, you should send good vibes to all of my Patreon backers who literally paid this comic for all of us!

Categories
Alt Text Included Comics Sustainability comics

Foraging for wild plants, what, how and where?

Summer is approaching very fast! (Well, depends where you live. Maybe where you are the summer has already arrived.) What summer means to me is foraging wild plants! I use a large variety of wild plants for food, seasoning and even medicine! But storing the herbs can get hard. Especially because we live in an apartment building! That means we just don’t have enough space in our freezer (even if we have a separate chest freezer). I have solved that problem by storing most of our herbs by drying them instead of freezing! Here’s a comic that shows you perfectly how my house is filled with herbs all summer long! (Psst, after the comic I’ll give you a list of my favorite wild plants that we go foraging for and what I use them for.)

Watercolor artwork of H-P surrounded with herbs from foraging trip. Text says "Where am I drying herbs?"
Photo of a table with a TV on it. In front of the TV there's a paper with basil leaves on it. There's also 4 jars of already dried herbs next to it. A text on the image says: There's perfectly good space in front of the tv! You can''t even put plants there to cover the TV screen.
Photo of the small space that's above the fridge and below the highedt cupboard. There's a metal net that has some leaves on it. Text says: There's that awkward space above the fridge! Perfect for drying herbs. Why not use a herb dryer though, you may ask. Because it uses electricity. If I can dry them without any more resources, I'll do it.
Picture of a kitchen table that has absolutely no space for eating, because there's foraged herbs on sheets of paper! Text: If there's too much herbs I have to leave them on the kitchen table too.
Picture of a window. There's nails on top of the window and herbs hanging on strings from the nails. Text: I also hang them from these nails above the kitchen window! This dries them fastest because the more air they have around them, the faster they dry!
Photo of a plate with herbs on top of kitchen cupboards. Text: We have some weird space above the kitchen capinets. Too high to use for anything else than drying herbs! I just use a newspaper under them and try to space them out so that they don't touch each other.
Photo of some foraged clover flowers on top of a paper that's on top of a bookshelf. Text: And if I absolutely run out of space, I put them on top of any furniture, like this bookshelf.
Here's a closeup of the herbs that were in front of the tv. Text: Wanna hear more about my life? I have a tier on my patreon where I post autobiographical comics you can't see elsewhere! patreon.com/hplehkonen

I think now’s the time to give you a link to my Patreon.

The wild plants we forage the most!

Here’s a list! (Finnish name in brackets)

  1. Stinging nettle (nokkonen)
    We use a lot of stinging nettle! It’s nutricious and can be used like spinach! We especially make salty pancakes (crepes?) with it. We eat those with lingonberry jam! It can be used for mutliple things, like tea, but because there’s a lot of plants that are basically only good for tea, we don’t really waste stinging nettle for tea.
  2. Rosebay willowherb (Maitohorsma)
    We collect the young leaves before the plant flowers and we prepare them by first withering the leaves and then rolling them and then fermenting them a bit before drying it. This technique is used for some of the best teas in the world and it works amazingly well with rosebay willowherb leaves! It’s called hiostaminen in Finnish.
  3. Goutweed (vuohenputki)
    We only collect this early in the spring, when basically nothing else grows yet. That also makes it easy to spot. It’s the only thing that grows! We either eat it fresh as a salad or we use the same preparing method as willowherb to make it into tea!
  4. Common yarrow (siankärsämö)
    We gather the young leaves and just dry them. They are a very good seasoning for casseroles!
  5. Meadowsweet (mesiangervo)
    We gather meadowsweet leaves for tea and ferment them the same way we did with willowherb, but there’s more to meadowsweet! We also collect the flowers and dry them. They have some pain relieving substances in them, so when I start getting a headache, I just make myself a meadowsweet tea. Despite it’s sweet name, the tea with the flowers tastes absolutely disgusting (the leaves taste better), but it heals my headache! I also use this as a flu remedy, though then I put in other things too… Some for getting it to taste better, some to make it more effective.
  6. Dandelion (voikukka)
    Dandelion roots are wonderful in a vegetable casserole! But they’re a pain in the ass to dig out and even more of a pain to clean, so we don’t use them often despite me loving their taste. But if you do gardening and you have to dig them out anyways, don’t throw them away! Eat them! (They work well in a blended vegetable soup too!)

I think that’s all the ones we use a lot… and dandelion that I’d love to use more, but I’m lazy. Besides these we use a variety of other plants too, but not as much. Here’s some more of them: rowan leaves (pihlaja), ground-ivy (maahumala), clover (apila), juniper (kataja) and spruce (kuusi). There was some more too, but the translating site I used didn’t have translations for them. Also this doesn’t include wild mushrooms or berries we pick when we go foraging.

Want to learn more about foraging? Or something else?

If you’re interested in learning more about foraging in Finland, just ask! I’m always open for new comic ideas. It’s way easier for me to know what kind of stuff you want to see if you just tell me directly. Also if you’re interested in reading more about the foods we prepare at home, here’s a link to my previous post about kombucha!

Ps. This comic was brought to you by my Patreon backers! Yes, they pay to get access to some exclusive materials on Patreon BUT they also make it possible for me to use less time to uphold capitalism and more time to do educational comics and posts like this for free! Big thank you to all my Patreon backers!