Green Action Week: something that happens when we share…
Think about the last time someone passed something on to you: a recipe, a bag of seedlings, a skill learned from their grandmother. No cash involved, no app, no receipt. Just an exchange rooted in relationship. Something happens when we share like this; it opens the door to a different form of exchange.
Green Action Week is a global joint action campaign to promote sustainable consumption. The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) started the Swedish campaign in 1990 and the international campaign in 2010 to showcase activities undertaken by organisations around the world that contribute to bringing about a better world for all. SSNC undertakes this campaign in collaboration with Consumers International, which funds some of its members to take part. Mycelium Media Colab is the campaign’s communications partner, amplifying participants’ inspiring work and supporting the Community of Practice through regular knowledge exchanges and storytelling circles. A Green Action Week Youth Programme was initiated in 2025 to elevate their voices and actions to bring about a better world.
It takes us back to our roots, where communities grow together, support each other, learn and thrive, and the environment flourishes. It’s a mindset of abundance rather than lack.
That’s the spirit behind Green Action Week, a global campaign that takes place every year in the first week of October. The theme is Sharing Community, and organisations from around the world come together to share skills, knowledge, food, resources, time and more. It’s a joyful campaign that celebrates the heart of humanity, joining in solidarity, learning and inspiring each other. Growing a sharing community is a simple, yet very powerful act, one that shifts the current trajectory of the world and the mindsets that feed it.
With creative thinking and positive action, it creates thriving communities, and through that, thriving individuals. And as communities share more, something else shifts too: we begin to consume more sustainably, learning to live well with what we already have, rather than endlessly acquiring more. When we circulate rather than consume, we ease the pressure on the natural world without sacrificing the things that truly matter.
Across more than 50 countries, people are already doing this. Women in Senegal teaching neighbours to make soap from local plants. Farmers in Kenya passing seeds through exchange circles that have existed for generations. Schoolchildren in the Philippines swapping clothes instead of adding to mountains of fast fashion waste. Everyday acts, carried out by ordinary people, that together weave something extraordinary, and quietly reshape how we consume.
In 2025, 35 000 people participated across more than 50 countries, and more than 6 million people were reached through radio, media and community events. You can read more about this in the Anthology of Sharing Community, which brings these stories to life.
Join the campaign this October
Host any sharing activity in your community: a seed swap, an upcycling workshop, a community meal, a repair café, a storytelling circle… It can be small. It can be simple. If it involves sharing something of value with the people around you, it counts.
Share what you do using #GreenActionWeek2026 and tag @GreenActionWeek. Free resources and guides can be found at greenactionweek.org.
Information sessions are being held on 15 July 2026, register at greenactionweek.org.
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