Last weekend marked the 12th annual Environmental Festival in Oslo, Norway. Climate Advocates from the Norwegian delegation used this weekend as a tool for informing the wider public about the concept of swapping. Members of the swapping team were present to hand out copies of their recently published booklet which aims to teach children about this fun and environmentally friendly activity. On Friday, June 4th, the swappers handed out over 250 booklets to children and their teachers before they marched down the main street of Oslo to open the Environmental Festival.

Drago Talvescu felt the event was the ideal opportunity to spread the word on swapping “We heard that 3000 children would be present that Friday morning, and we decided it was a perfect opportunity to distribute our booklet. Children and teachers alike seemed to be really interested in our idea.”

The next day the swappers had a booth on the main street of Oslo in order to present their concept of a swapping market. People were encouraged to swap things that they had with them for a number of other items they had spread out on a table. The biggest problem was that most participants of the festival did not know about the swap in advance and so had not brought along something to swap. However, the team still managed to spread the word about swapping to nearly 150 people. They also distributed the rest of the booklets at the Children’s Environmental Festival on the other side of town.

“All in all, we got our point across. We collected about 50 e-mail addresses of people who wanted to be informed about our next swapping event. Although the actual swapping market during the festival did not function as well as it has at previous events, we are really glad that we were there to tell people about the idea,“ Heidi Smith of the Swapper team concluded.