Building a home

A sub­urb doesn’t seem like a very log­i­cal loca­tion for the devel­op­ment of an eco-vil­lage. Liv­ing in har­mo­ny with nature while putting up some ter­raced hous­es, can you imag­ine it? Y. and I step out of our back door and into the mud. Zuiderveld is locat­ed in a swampy area that was tra­di­tion­al­ly used for agriculture. …

Don’t push it

I cycle through Aberdeen, a bag of gro­ceries swing­ing from my steer­ing wheel. I have been to the Lidl where you can buy, for exam­ple, cau­li­flower and zuc­chi­ni with­out pack­ag­ing. Shop­ping veg­an and plas­tic-free by bike, it doesn’t get much more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly. But the warm, fuzzy feel­ing stays away. Instead, I feel anger bub­bling up. …

Food without plastic

Fred­dy has joined a group of col­leagues who will try not to use sin­­gle-use plas­tic dur­ing Lent. This Plas­tic Chal­lenge start­ed on Wednes­day. So, in the com­ing weeks we will not buy any­thing that is pack­aged in plas­tic. Because plas­tic is main­ly a prob­lem when it ends up on the street, I also intend to …

Action from hope

Yes­ter­day I went to a work­shop at St Ethel­bur­ga’s, a church in the heart of the City of Lon­don that has devel­oped into a cen­ter for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and peace­build­ing. The title of the work­shop was “Kick­start a Spir­i­tu­al Ecol­o­gy Hub” — some­thing that I would even­tu­al­ly like to do in the Nether­lands. With about 25 …