The seals were of course super cute as you can see, but there was also a sustainability aspect of this establishment that I thought was pretty cool.
As part of the ‘Happy Seal!’ program, they collect unused/broken/disposed fishnets which are then recycled into other usable items, likes for example T-shirts – from which the profits are then invested back into the seal care facilities.
I personally ended up purchasing only some small souvenirs, like this keychain made from trashed fishnets found at shore, made by Jutters geluk.
All in all, it was a very lovely experience, and I would recommend anyone to visit this place. According to the seal-shaped color-changing mood ring I also purchased I’m pretty relaxed since visiting – what other proof do you need? đ
If Pieterburen isn’t really on your way (which I can imagine as it’s in the middle of nowhere in the very northern part of the Netherlands), don’t worry, you can get a peak at the seals via their live streaming webcam!
If you, or someone you know, is planning on upgrading their iPhone 6 or 6 plus to an iPhone 7 or 7 plus, you’ll most likely notice that even though it seems to be juuuuust the right size overall, the cover won’t fit well around the camera. Sadface.
But don’t go off purchasing another shiny piece of plastic just yet! You might just be able to save a whole smartphone cover from the landfills.
Here’s how:
First, put on the cover on the phone, and just draw the outline of how big the camera slot on the cover should be with a pencil.
Then take the cover off (very important detail for the well-being of the phone) and grab some sharp cutting tool – in case of a simple, thin plastic case a good sharp knife will do.
Cut alongside the pencil drawing.
Once you’re done, remove the piece you’ve been trying to cut away. Done!
And the result: perfect. Also didn’t cost anything, just 3 minutes of your time – which is way less than having to walk to a store to get a new one đ
So with this simple trick, we drastically decreased the amount of plastic waste of the transaction of getting a new smartphone cover.
From this much                           to this much:
Throughout this blog I have argued several times against buying new things, for example by pointing out that clothes don’t really expire or by showcasing the nice items I have been purchasing second-hand.
However, there’s another direction of shopping I occasionally have to promote, which is when I find products that can directly reduce waste or have some other beneficial aspect in regards to sustainability – like carrying around my Dopper waterbottle instead of buying one-use plastic bottles. I emphasise that I do not have paid ads on this blog, anything I promote is based purely on my own findings. And anyway, I genuinely stand by the idea that:
The must sustainable option is to use what you already do have.
So buying something new from a sustainability perspective should really only come into question once you’ve exhausted your personal resources and the potential second-hand resources too. That’s why in today’s blogpost I would like to talk about 2 particular items that a lot of people keep breaking and hence buying new ones all the time: umbrellas and smartphones.
Let’s start with the umbrellas. Anyone living in the Netherlands is genuinely accustomed to the sight of broken umbrellas in random places on the street and clogging up trash cans. Don’t believe it? See for yourself on Dutch Umbrellas.
And I have to admit, I have been guilty myself for destroying and throwing away at least 1 umbrella per year while living here. Well, technically it’s the wind’s fault for destroying them, but you get the point.
So at one point I kind of stopped using umbrellas, because it just seemed pointless, especially because in the Netherlands you mostly bike. However, I did still miss having and using one on the occasional walks I needed to do in the rain. Luckily, last year I came across the brand called senz° and the concept of their stormproof umbrella that is supposed to withstand the natural forces that keep killing all the ‘regular’ umbrellas. I purchased this beauty below, and so far it has not disappointed me, it really hasn’t been folded inside-out at all while carrying it in the wind.
So if you live in a place where the weather eats through umbrellas, maybe you can give this a shot, and reduce the pile of broken umbrellas that humans create. Or if you are lucky enough in live in New York City, checkout the umbrella rental idea of ‘brellaBox – man I hope they extend to other cities soon. đ
Enough about umbrellas for now. Let’s talk about smartphones. Again, I guess I don’t have to explain the cycle the modern city-dweller goes through with this item: you either break the screen, or drop it in the toilet, or it just becomes slow. Either way, on average people buy a new one within 1 – 2 years, many time just because the screen is broken. That’s why I love the Fairphone. It’s modular and thus repairable phone that lets you replace certain parts in case they are broken without having to get a whole new phone.
Also, it’s made from recycled materials, and is produced by keeping social values in mind. These are the reasons why I chose to work for them for a while. If you think I’m biased, check out this comparison why it is the most green smartphone currently available on the market.
So to wrap up, my sustainability shopping advice: do not buy any new items until you have still a functioning other versions at home. But in case you do break your umbrella and/or smartphone and are in need of a new one, consider brands that support sustainability like the above. It’s worth it! đ
During the last couple months I have come across several small items or stories that I wanted to cover on this blog.
However, I kept postponing to write about these, as I was planning to elaborate on each of them separately, but then I figured, maybe I should just bundle some of them up into one blog post as a showcase of seemingly small, yet impactful gestures that – if applied globally – could really make a difference.
My first example is about a ticket to a national park I visited in China. I tend to put tickets away for sentimental reasons, but generally they are a useless piece of paper that most people immediately toss away as soon as they enter the attraction. However, in this park, the ticket actually served a purpose – it had the map of the park printed on the back of it!
I’m not trying to say that this has never been done anywhere else before, but I was just surprised how rarely I see this simple and smart solution: that instead of handing out a separate huge folding map to everyone (that would usually also just get trashed at the end of trip along with the ticket itself) to just use the paper that is already necessarily given to the customer and make it multifunctional. I wish small and simple things like this were implemented in more establishments.
My second example is sadly not from my own life, nevertheless it’s heartwarming and inspiring story of friendship – and it involves a sustainable aspect. It’s about an uncle and a cousin, who bought a birthday card back in 1970, and instead of buying each other new ones every year, they kept sending the very same postcard to each other – a baffling 94 times! To me, as a person who has been huge on writing letters and postcards as a kid, this story is so moving. To imagine the anticipation and the joy that the very same postcard generated every single time it was sent and received! Ah, I’m getting teary-eyed already. Amazing.
The last and shortest little story I have for this post is about another item that has been used for quite a while. I know someone who owns a 20-year-old sleeping bag, and that just made me wonder – how many of the items we own do we ever use up to their full life capacity? Like in the case above, what’s the potential – and actual! – lifecycle of a postcard even? I have already done some research on some clothing items I own (some of them for more than 7 years by now) – but there’s probably other stuff that’s been around even for longer.. I guess I will have to explore that in another blogpost! đ
I believe we all have things lying around in our homes that we don’t know what to do with really.
Some of the stuff is easier to deal with than other ones. For example clothes can easily be disposed of in the dedicated donation containers, and the more expensive items you can try selling via Marktplaats or in Facebook groups.
But what do you do with the more ambiguous items, like those 5 euro slippers that turned out too small, or that travel book about Brazil you’ll never need again? I personally never throw things out that are still in usable condition, but sometimes it’s just really hard to find a new owner for these one-off items. I have taken some to thrift shops, but sometimes the hassle seems too big for some smaller things. Currently I have a dozen of earrings I don’t need that I even tried putting up for free on Marktplaats – and still nothing happened.
The good news is, I think I might have found the solution for these situations: Weggeefkast to the rescue!
This ‘Give-away cabinet’ you see on the picture above is exactly meant for this purpose – as you can see the items placed there range from children’s toys to bathroom scales. Have something at home you don’t use but you think others might be happy to have? Put it there!
This particular closet is close to Squash City by Amsterdam Centraal, if you want to check it out:
It is the only one I bumped into so far. But I’ll be sure to place my earrings and other usable items here when I pass by!
If you have seen any other similar cabinets, please share!
I was already amazed by the sustainability efforts of Schiphol, Amsterdam’s airport a couple years ago, upon reading the signs in the bathrooms that their toilets are flushed with rainwater. (I have always wanted to do that in my own home too, but I’m pretty sure my landlord wouldn’t like the idea. If you do though, here’s a nice guide on how to do this on your own bathroom.)
But this year, it seems like they came up with a couple more awesome ideas revolving around sustainability, including for example a revolving door that generates electricity while you push it.
And some bikes you can hop on to charge your phone. I really wish they had these in more places!
I love it that they do this. A shame though that the advertised URL (schiphol.nl/sustainability) doesn’t work – I’d love to read more about the stuff they do!
The other day while walking around in Amsterdam I stumbled on these cute little boats. They all said ‘This boat is made of Amsterdam Canal Plastic’, and on close inspection, their floors were clearly made of plastic waste pieces, so I just had to look up what all this was about.
As it turns out, the company behind these boats is Plastic Whale, and their initiative is as cool as can be. The formula is simple: take people on boat tours, fish out plastic from Amsterdam canals, recycle plastic, make boats from recycled plastic – and then the cycle starts all over. Tour – fishing – recycle – boat, more tours – more fishing  – more to recycle – more boats. Yes, it’s awesome. Check out their wonderful little introduction video here:
Recently I’ve come across various articles on ‘purging’ personal belongings, like clothes and make-up collections. It seems like the general rule of thumb given is that if you haven’t worn or used something within the last year or within a season, then that means you don’t really need it and you should get rid of it – as if clothes expired or became unusable after 1 year.
Well, I guess this makes sense – as long as the goal is just personal cleansing. However, if you are doing this related to some sustainability motive, then this becomes very controversial. If you think about it, this idea of clothes not being any good after not using them for a while does nothing but feed the fast fashion trends that come out with new seasonal collections every year, for every quarter. This just reaffirms the consuming lifestyle in which you should always keep trading your existing belongings to newer, better ones on the market.
I personally own pieces of clothing that I’ve had for many years. To illustrate, I just pulled out two of my favorite sweaters from my closet, each of them was purchased approximately 7 years ago.
I just wore the red one last week, but hm, honestly, the brown one I think I haven’t worn the last year. Oh no! So I need to throw it out now? Heck no. I love this sweater, and just because I gave it a little pause doesn’t mean I don’t ‘need’ it anymore. I know I will wear it again. I will not buy a new one instead of this per fashion terms ‘outdated’ or ‘expired’ piece. In fact, I will probably keep wearing it for another 7 years – or at least until it falls apart. Wanna bet? đ
Long story short, I think for any environmentally conscious person the key should be to establish a managable pile of longlasting things. Like, really loooooonglasting. Purge the ‘have-I-worn-this-in-the-last-12-months’ purging rule. Start the ‘how-long-can-I-keep-wearing-this’ challange. It’s more fun, and less work too đ
As enchanting as Christmas maybe, it’s also unfortunately the most wasteful holiday we have. Sigh. Yep, there’s a pretty high price to pay for all the pretty presents under those trees.
And I’m not even planning to go into detail on the actual production of the gifts themselves and so on. I am plainly referring to the tradition of the trees and the wrapping of the gifts. To quote some facts, for example the amount of wrapping paper thrown out at Christmas in the UK is about 83 km2, which means you could wrap the whole city of Groningen with it. Or the number of Christmas trees dumped into landfills or incinerated in the UK is 6 million. I don’t think I need to put that number in perspective. It’s simply a lot. A lot a lot a lot.
Yikes. So let’s just all agree, that the numbers are depressing.
This got me thinking. I went to fetch my mail, and having only recently moved I have yet to put up the sticker on my mailbox to keep out all the commercial magazines, so needless to say my post was full of it. I was grabbing all of those to take them to the paper trash, and then I stopped and wondered. Hmmm, these magazines and wrapping paper seem to have a lot in common! They are both made out of paper, they are both used normally once and then thrown away. So, instead of throwing these away, and buying wrapping paper which will be also be thrown away later, why not use those magazines as wrapping paper?
So I did! And guess what, the recipients enjoyed the presents just as much. Duh. đ
Gifts wrapped in papers that try to sell me insane amount of fireworks for NYE.
It’s too late now to unwrap and rewrap, as Christmas has just passed, but for those reading this there’s still something you can do for your conscience and ease the terrible guilt you might be feeling right now:
1. Recycle the packaging and wrapping papers accordingly
2. Instead of throwing out, keep some of the wrapping paper and re-use it for other present opportunities. I know it seems weird at first, but remember, it becomes normal if you keep doing it!
3. After multiple reuses, repeat advice nr. 1.
Okay, so we’re done with the wrapping paper. But what about those poor Christmas trees? Not everyone has awesome sustainability-conscious parents like mine, who have obtained a plastic Christmas tree back 25 years ago and have reused that every year. To which honestly, the only backdraw is that as a kid, the tree seems smaller every year – because well, you kind of grow, but the tree doesn’t. But that’s really all there is to it, otherwise it’s neat – no pine-needles all over the floor, no hassle about getting, transporting and trashing it – it can conveniently be grabbed and put back into the attic every year, and no money wasted every year – just one initial investment which lasts for a last time. Except if your Mom is as resourceful as mine, who just found ours on the street, so we’ve probably been as green as can be, whilst having a free Christmas tree for the last quarter of the decade.
The Christmas tree that has seen more Christmases than me.
Long story short, I strongly recommend everybody to consider switching to a sustainable tree-solution. You have a year for these facts to sink in. But for now it’s too late to un-buy the one you already have standing in your living room.
However, you will need to get rid of it soon. And fortunately enough, the city of Amsterdam provides a green solution for that. All you need to do is bring the tree to the designated collection spots at the designated times and they take care of the rest – in a sustainable way. There are 6 of these points throughout the city, in all major areas, and they are generally available from January 4. The lucky ones living in Oost get not only 50 eurocents for every tree, but also take part in a lottery for prizes! Not to miss! For more info, read along here on the dedicated Gemeente page.
So if you live in a place where the weather eats through umbrellas, maybe you can give this a shot, and reduce the pile of broken umbrellas that humans create. Or if you are lucky enough in live in New York City, checkout the umbrella rental idea of 
step-by-step sustainability 