saving trees or emitting CO2? June 10, 2009

Well, you have the successful stories and the less successful ones. Today the editors’ team of the OverMorgen decided to quit. This was the magazine of the Dutch students NGO for sustainable development. I was involved in this since three years. We wrote about developments regarding sustainability at universities, local grassroots actions, and the environment related to personal lifestyle. Lack of money forced us to stop our activities: you can’t ask subsidy for publishing magazines. We tried to find sustainable businesses and organisations that were willing to advertise, but the results were insufficient. Printing on FSC-paper and with eco-friendly ink is quite expensive you know…  So that’s the end of that, and we closed the meeting with drinking some nice organic beers and eating some organic chocolate

Ah well, digital is more suited to nowadays world anyway. I can still publish on this wonderful web-log and might start writing for other digital channels. By going digital, we reduce our paper consumption so save some trees, but will emit more CO2 for the energy our computers are using. What’s worse? In the end, there isn’t a single option that doesn’t impact the environment…

 

Seeing old exemplars of the magazine?  (Mostly in Dutch)

OIL = OVER June 3, 2009

Yep, as you guys know, I’m an enthusiast cyclist! Bikes have many advantages over cars. Bikes are faster on the short distance, they are parked right in front of your door and bring you to the place where you have to be, and not to a nearest parking lot. You are never in a traffic jam. You can take shortcuts. You can drink & drive. It’s cheap. And, very important, you are not polluting the environment.

To bad they sometimes break down. In my case, quite often. Today I had to go to the bikes repair man again. And of course that guy is situated in the city center, and I’m not. I don’t like to walk, so I had to look for another way to transport the broken bike to the repair shop.

a carrier cycle

The answer is: the carrier cycle (Dutch: bakfiets). My housemate has one and it’s being used heavily. Almost every day, someone drops by to borrow the thing. Which I can understand, because it’s a lot of fun to ride this bike. It’s very heavy and it’s  hard to steer or brake. And everybody is looking at you when they pass you.

Well, I must admit I wasn’t going very fast. Every grandma could have cought up with me. And it made me sweat a lot. Still, looking at all the cars passing me, I thought: OIL = OVER! You guys don’t know it yet, but the carrier cycle IS the future.

Well, all right, I have to admit that if I had a driver’s licence, I might have taken a car….

Turn them bastards off! May 18, 2009

Yes, escalators have stop-buttons and you can turn them off yourself!

Friday evening, 7 pm. Not many people are still working in the university building. And certainly no Dutch. Their weekend, which starts at Thursday night, is holy. I’m one of the rare who doesn’t care about Friday nights.

 

On my way out, I pass the escalators. They are always running. Bzzzzzzzzz….. even though there are no people making use of the silly moving stairs, they are still using energy. What a waste. There must be a stop-button, right?

 

Yes, there is! It’s round and red, just like a stop-button should look like. I press the stop-button. BzzzzzSTOP! Ha, that’s fun. Now the other one. What a satisfaction. I walk down one floor, there are another two escalators. BzzzzzzzzSTOP! BzzzzzzzzSTOP! Total silence remains. Four pair of African eyes, three pair of Asian eyes and a pair of Latin-American eyes stare at me. They must think I’m out of my mind.

 

When I walk out of the university building, a big smile appears on my face.

Voting for the Environment May 15, 2009

On the 4th of June, we can vote for the European Parliament. Today I received my voting card by mail. For me, the EU elections are especially important for the environment. The EU is known for having stricter environmental policies than many member countries, and European law goes ‘above’ national laws. This means that member countries have to take over the European laws in their national laws. It’s not surprising that the EU is interfering so much with our environmental policies. Many environmental problems don’t stick to national borders: climate change, air pollution, ecosystems (the Ecological Main Structure), etc.

Especially for the elections, some environmental organisations have developed a digital tool that can help you make your decision, on which party to vote. The questions posed only relate to the environment. I filled it in, and – surprise! – it looks like I’ll be voting for the Green Left party. We agree on 17 out of 20 questions. With VVD and CDA (right wing parties) I have almost no similarities in the thinking about environment.

Wanna try yourself: fill in the questionnaire at www.groenekieswijzer.nl  (DUTCH!!)

I’ll be voting on the 4th. What are you going to vote? Fill in the poll!

                                     

Peas on Earth May 14, 2009

What’s more lovely, when you’re supposed to be working on your master thesis, than working in your own garden? Imagine a Sunday, which is actually sunny – and all is perfect. I live in a student house and we are lucky to have a garden. Most of our garden consists of weeds: I could spend weeks on just removing stinging nettles (they’ll come back anyway). But we’re also trying to grow some vegetables. For this purpose, there’s a tiny spot that looks a bit more orderly than the rest of the jungle. We grow some salads, rhubarb, onions, strawberries, different kinds of beans, carrots, raspberries, radish, spinach, beets, and some other veggies of which I don’t know the English names

 Last Sunday I’ve been planting peas. (I planted the seeds in empty egg-baskets first. Please, dear readers, never make that same mistake. It took me quite a while to get their tiny roots out of those bloody cartons.) Now I’m checking daily whether they’ve grown already. Because, what’s nicer than walking in your own garden, when you’re supposed to be working on your master thesis?

 

Here are some pictures for you so I can share the happy feeling I get when I see our veggies grow!

Garden jungle

Peas on Earth

rubber boots

Happiness can be simple

People on Earth, unite! May 12, 2009

The Suicide Building: now only for international students?

My housing association has a new brilliant plan, which is to no longer allow international students to rent a room in my house. This is because this association (officially a ‘foundation’ but they behave pretty corporate) considers it’s task to house only Dutch students. Non-dutch should find another solution. Well, thank you Idealis ( = name of the housing association, name means “ideal”) for not asking my opinion on this topic. Currently, out of 6 people, there’s only 2 Dutch in my house. But apparently Idealis dislikes the idea of people of different cultures integrating with each other. Instead, they would like all international students to live in one big multistory appartment building. We call this particular building the suicide building, because it’s so depressing. Actually already two people have jumped off – it’s very suitable for that.

 

Well, if they think they can continue with this policy change they forgot one important thing: the activist mindset of most people living in this cluster. Today we held a meeting on how to stop this policy. About 60 people showed up, which is not bad when you consider that about 200 people are living here. A petition will follow, we’re e-mailing, informing the media, lobbying, and if this turnes out to be not enough, we’ll start a court case. Under the Rome treaty (from 1957!), it’s forbidden to treat EU-citizens in different ways. That is pure discrimination. But it shouldn’t matter whether you’re from an EU or a non-EU country. Whether your home country is the Netherlands, Sweden, Mali, Laos or Guatemala, you’re welcome in my house. Unbelievable that large organisations such as housing associations apparently don’t understand that.

 

I strongly believe that social matters and environmental matters are deeply linked. As long as people are treated in an unfair way, this is where their energy will be focussing at – and not at protecting the environment. People are part of the environment and a first priority. In order to be able to protect the planet, people have to come together, instead of fighting each other. Meeting people from different countries and different cultures is a first prerequisite for this. I’m lucky that in my town, this is possible. We have students from 80 different countries. Integration between us should be actively stimulated, not inhibited.

 

Yesterday I watched the movie “Surplus”. In this movie, John Zerzan is being interviewed. He sais: “according to me, damaging buildings or possessions is not violence. Violence is only possible against people. To me, people who just sit in front of the television, drinking coke and smoking joints, are mindless. This inactivity, allowing all kinds of injust to happen, without caring, to me that’s violence.” Well, I don’t agree with many of his views, but a statement like this certainly makes you think.

a dangerous experiment… May 10, 2009

Wow, I’m getting into this now. According to this article  permanent hair dyes used to cause cancer, but now ‘only’ cause “severe allergic reactions” and leukaemia. Thanks to legislation, the most harmful chemicals are already banned. You see, the corporate world does not really feel responsible for you getting cancer or not. But they cannot deny legislation.

“Perhaps the most controversial ingredient in modern hair colorants is p-Phenylenediamine (PPD). Found in permanent dyes, it is linked to rare but sometimes severe allergic reactions. Its use in hair dyes is banned in Germany, France and Sweden.”

Thank God I bought this stuff in Sweden. But some of the chemicals mentioned in the article were also in my Schwartzkopf. So this turned out to be quite a dangerous experiment! Ain’t I a daredevil?

Chemicals in my hair May 9, 2009

I certainly have some vanity in me. I colour my hair. Red. Correction: the reddest red that I can find in the shop. There is certainly an environmental friendly alternative for colouring your hair: henna. Well, I’ve tried it, and I totally dislike that stuff. Have you ever tried it? It smells, and it looks like mud. You have to put it in your hair, cover it with plastic, and remain seated like that for two hours. The result is hardly visible (my natural hair colour is dark brown), and worse, after two times washing you can’t see anything anymore. That’s a lot of work for a short pleasure.

No, then the not-so-environmentally friendly hair colouring stuff. Easy to handle, doesn’t smell, only takes half an hour, and it’s permanent. Yeah, that’s more my style.

So this morning I used the stuff again. But started to wonder a bit why they put so many warnings that you can absolutely not leave this stuff on your head for more than half an hour. What will happen? Does your hair melt off or something? What on earth am I exactly putting on my head here…. And after use, I didn’t know where to go with the leftover packaging. Does this go in the chemical waste??

That’s where I started to consult Greenpeace. They have a (Dutch) website which deals with hazardous chemical substances in make-up. There you also find the link to a website with a list of such substances, which you can still find in your products. So I typed in all ingredients of my hair colourant. Which are A LOT. Incredible how many (chemical) substances there are in one small package…. what to think of Acryl amidopropyltrimonium Chloride/Acrylates Copolymer? Yes, that’s a lot of typing guys! I didn’t get any results by the way, but I’m not so sure whether that means that there are no hazardous substances in this particular product, or that I was just making spelling mistakes.

Since 2007 we have in the EU a policy about subsituting hazardous chemicals (REACH).  That was really hard needed, because those crazy substances are even already found in the blood of newborns. It seems that now many of those substances are forbidden,  most producers of beauty products have taken them out. Pfiew. I hope that also applies for all products I’m using. But there are still a lot of chemicals which are currently not being covered by REACH. So, watch out!

Grow your own food, even without a garden May 9, 2009

Home made sprouts

Trying to integrate environmental concern into your personal life can translate into big changes, disappointments, or tiny successes.  In the latter catergory I’d like to one of my latest experiments, which I consider quite succesfull. This is especially nice for people who’d like to grow their own food, but don’t have a garden. All you need for this is a window.

My subject today is the sproutmix. Sprouts are considered to be very healthy, I don’t know exactly why, but it feels like it makes sense! I bought my sproutmix in the organic shop, but you can also get the seeds in other places. You can use alfalfaseeds, lentils or fenegriek. This is how you do:

Take a clean, big glass jar. Put in one spoon of your sproutmix. Soak for 6 hours. Then throw away the water and put a small (plastic) net over the jar with a rubber. Put the jar upside down on a smal dish, or at least something that will prevent water dripping all over your window ledge. Flush with clean water, 2-3 times a day. After 5 days your sprouts are ready to eat!

I think they’re delicious and it’s fun to see your seeds become small plants!

Tips & Trics 1: Check your bank! May 8, 2009

Don’t finance a polluter

Large (and small) corporations which are responsible for environmental pollution, violation of human rights, manufacturing weapons, etc are all financed by either banks and/or governments. Do you have some saving money? Then you run the risk this is being used to finance exactly those corporations which undermine your efforts to create a better world. Would be prefer to be part of the solution than the problem, then it’s a good idea to check where your bank is putting your money.

I think a lot of people are not aware of this fact. But it probably comprises a large deal of the influence you have upon the world – especially when you actually do own some money and aren’t a completely broke student.

This is what you can do:

-         send your bank e-mails, requesting information on which corporations they finance. If you find out they are sponsoring some Bad Guys, ask them why, and to change their policy. I am truly convinced such e-mails really help. Stakeholder (yep, that’s you!) pressure is determined to be a central factor influencing environmental proactiveness. Even a relatively small amount of such e-mails can cause relevant managers to scratch their head. A damaged corporate reputation is their worst nightmare.

-         Change your bank. Put your money on a responsible bank. I don’t know about any other countries, but in the Netherlands we have two ethical banks: Triodos and ASN Bank. Their interest rates for your savings are as high or even higher than those of competitors. Small effort, great effect!

Do you have any tips regarding ethical banking initiatives, especially in other countries than the Netherlands? Don’t hesitate to leave a comment!

Links For Dutch:

Triodos Bank (English)   or Dutch

ASN Bank

Bankenwijzer (compare your bank)