How do you make restaurant food from waste? How do you farm food in the middle of a city? Do you really have to work weekends in the restaurant business? What does it mean to unite under a one woman, one vote enterprise that helps immigrant women in Skåne find work? With the help of Tourism in Skåne, we visited businesses and social enterprises to answer these questions and discover the people who work and run sustainable food businesses and economic sustainable projects.

Four stories of people who have succeeded despite the odds. The challenges, highs and lows, the warmth and friendship, in a business that is traditionally cut-throat and non-progressive. How do we stop wasting food and how can we help each other to be economically independent, to have a work life balance that really means something? People want change, but how can we connect you and me and make the world of food sustainable for future generations?

Capital cities aren’t usually the first places you’d think of when it comes to green, clean, pollution-free spaces. Luckily, some cities like Oslo are making sustainability a top priority.

As one of the fastest growing capitals in Europe, with tourist arrivals nearly doubling in the last 10 years, Oslo’s reputation as a green city is due to a lot more than its many parks and surrounding forests. Oslo has pledged to become a carbon neutral city by 2030, and this film highlights how urban planners, politicians, and businesses of different kinds work hard to ensure a sustainable future for the destination and its people.

Slovenia’s capital city has sustainability ingrained into its DNA. A local attitude to food production, re-use, and regeneration. With the largest car-free zone in EU, one of the highest measures of urban green spaces per capita in the world, some ingenious use for invasive plants, and an effortless determination to retain its Modernist history as a human-centered World Heritage Site.

Australia’s Tropical North Queensland is the only place in the world where two UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites meet; the Great Barrier Reef and the oldest refugial rainforest on the planet, the Wet Tropics Rainforest, which includes the well-known Daintree. Both are home to unique biodiversity and ancient ways of life. Sustainable travel here means tapping into both the environment and culture, connecting with the way life has been lived here in harmony with nature for tens of thousands of years. As we learn in this film, many tourism businesses in this region have a shared understanding of and commitment to the protection of the precious environments they operate in. 

This episode looks at how modern travel is embracing the lessons from Indigenous cultures to foster a sustainable future, for the environment and the people. We see how travelers can have uniquely Australian experiences, and at the same time actively contribute to the care of these fragile and special places by supporting the regrowth of coral and engaging with Indigenous marine and rainforest guides from the local communities.

Victoria, BC sits on the western edge of Canada, in touch with the sea, the mountains and the landscape at large. The communities and businesses of Greater Victoria enjoy the benefits of being so close to nature, and it is this connection that has pushed Destination Greater Victoria towards supporting decarbonization, the circular economy, and ecological education on a wide scale.

Jill Doucette, the founder of Synergy Enterprises, leads us through some of the many enterprises, from a hotel with a rooftop vegetable garden, whale watching education tours where we see Orcas in action, to a sky walk hung perched above the sea. The ongoing efforts of reconciliation with First Nation peoples is discussed and the trails and cycling routes that Victorians enjoy are shown in glorious splendor.