The Way Of The Buffalo

CO2 levels reduced in Europe for the third year in a row!

antoniefountain — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:50:43 +0000

Which is good.

But needs to be a lot better
http://www.nu.nl/algemeen/1971243/uitstoot-co2-in-eu-verder-omlaag.html

For all of you that don’t like to eat fish

antoniefountain — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:45:22 +0000

Here is a very good excuse not to.

Waste = Food

antoniefountain — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:31:10 +0000

Cradle To Cradle

For a while now, I’ve been hearing about a book called Cradle to Cradle. In fact, it’s been sitting on my bookshelf for a while, borrowed from a friend of mine.

This book is cool in a few different ways.

Firstly, it’s made of plastic. Which means you can actually hold it under the tap & it won’t get wet. (The downside is the book is bloody heavy.)
Secondly, the ink washes off when heated (don’t leave the book in the sun in your car, then, I suspect).
Thirdly, and this combines the first two points: if you heat it, and wash off the ink (seeing as it’s waterproof), you have a purely plastic book without toxins. Which means it’s 100% re-usable!

The cool thing about the cradle to cradle philosophy is that if we would design all of the products we use (including our shoes, clothes, buildings, plastic bottles etc.) to be re-used 100%, we would be living in a sustainable world. So the basic idea is “Let’s make things that we can completely re-use again”. Kind of like the rest of nature. Everything that is ever used or born or eaten or processed on this planet (except for the junk we humans make) eventually gets reused. Manure becomes fertilizer, bones become dust, dead plants become fertile soil over time.

The reason a cradle to cradle concept is necessary is because we are fast using up all of our natural resources (as I have mentioned earlier on this blog). And this is something we need to stop doing pretty quickly, otherwise we will go the way of the Buffalo. Actually, if we don’t watch out, we’ll go the way of the Dodo. Totally extinct & ridiculous to boot.

Anyway, I could try to explain this idea, but others have done it much better than I have. Here is one of the creators of the cradle to cradle concept talking about it on TED.org (if you’ve never been there before you should go there now!)

And here is a 50 minute documentary on cradle to cradle on Google video’s

Just because you don’t have one, doesn’t mean you can’t be one

antoniefountain — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:45:15 +0000

One of my favorite writers at the moment is Donald Miller, who writes about Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality and other such subjects.

He grew up without a dad & has recently started a really cool ‘Mentoring Project’ for boys without dads. The idea is that boys without dads eventually come to make up about 80% of the population of kids in prison. Boys without dads become oppressor, and girls without dads become victims. So solve the boy problem & you solve it all.

Often all it takes is for a guy to start playing baseball with the kid.

He explains what they’re doing about this in this great interview.

What’s Wrong With What We Eat (part 2)

antoniefountain — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:43:26 +0000

In my previous post, I mentioned the bio-industry as one of the major players contributing to global warming. However, this is not the only problem with what we eat.

Many of the products we buy, especially those made in Asia, Africa and South America, are made by abusing the labour force used to grow & harvest the crops. One of these crops is cocoa. Almost half of the world’s supply of cocoa is grown in Cote d’Ivoire, a country in Western Africa. It is estimated that 12.000 children are trafficked into forced labour on these cocoa-plantations, and that approximatlye 153.000 children are working in what is commonly know as the ‘worst forms of child labour’.

The big chocolate companies know this is a problem. In fact, they’ve acknowledged that they’re responsible for stopping what they call ‘Forced Adult Labour’ (which is a euphemism for slavery) and ‘the worst forms of child labour’. They promised in 2001 to put an end to these practices. By 2005, no forced adult labour or worst forms of child labour would be used to harvest cocoa in Ivory Coast or it’s neighbouring country Ghana. This aggreement is known as the Harkin-Engel protocol.

These promises, however, were never met. Now, a few individual chocolate companies have started to tidy up their act. Verkade, a Dutch chocolate maker, is already 100% Fair Trade, with Cadbury and Mars to follow. (Though not completely, and in the case of Mars it’ll still take ‘em another 11 years).

There are, however, many other companies not doing very much at all (which is a euphemism for not doing anything at all) on this issue. The main culprit in this being Nestlé. (Also famous for inducing whole African tribes into forgoing breast milk so they can buy Nestlé’s powdered milk, thus endagering the health of millions of African babies).

It’s time for these companies to get their act together. Until they do, every bar of chocolate you eat has the risk of being made by a 13 year old slave, hundreds of miles from home. Sobering stuff…

What’s Wrong With What We Eat (part 1)

antoniefountain — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:23:52 +0000

I really love the TED video’s. If you’ve never heard of them, go there NOW! Tons of fantastic speakers from the top of their field. Talking about design, storytelling, the glories of nature, issues facing the world, faith, or just plain cool gadgets. New video’s are available every week.

But that’s not the reason I’m writing this blogpost. One of their video’s is called ‘What’s wrong with what we eat’. In it, Mark Britmann tells us about the bio-industry. About being healthy. But also about the way the bio-industry is killing our planet.

As a result of this video, I’ve decided to eat less meat. Nowadays, my wife and I will have meat about 3 or 4 times a week. Quite a step for someone who up till recently considered a meal without meat not a real meal at all…

Watch the video here

We Do Not Pay For What We Buy

antoniefountain — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:55:47 +0000

Elsewhere on this blog I mention that a quest for higher profits causes large companies to squeeze out their suppliers. Now, I could spend 6 pages trying to explain that, but Annie Leonard has already done a fantastic job of it. Here’s a short YouTube video explaining how it works.

The full video by Annie Leonard (The Story of Stuff) is below

The Man takes The Lead

antoniefountain — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:56:18 +0000

Generally, I’m not a big fan of right-wing political parties, but the following is a good idea by one. The VVD, one of Holland’s major right-wings parties, today suggested that the Dutch government should lead the way by making government employees drive electrical powered cars.

This is similar to President Obama’s decision to buy a fleet of hybrid cars for the US government. It is very necessary for governments to take a leading role as the biggest consumers in creating more demand for sustainable solutions.

Everything that has a beginning has an end

antoniefountain — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:25:17 +0000

I just came across this infographic, which shows how finite our natural resources actually are. Though many of us are aware of the fact that our natural resources are being used up rapidly, we often don’t realise how quickly we are using up all of our resources.

It is time for us to change the way we consume products. Buy rechargeable batteries, take the bicycle or public transport instead of the car, eat less meat (the bio-industry is one of the main culprits in the deforestation & the increase in global warming. An interesting article on this can be found on the website of Fox News, not exactly the most leftist jouranlistic medium).

Simple things to do, but actions that can actually make a difference.

Going the Way of the Buffalo

antoniefountain — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:20:15 +0000

Just a few hundred years ago, vast herds of American Buffalo roamed the Great Plains of the United States of America. These herds could contain up to a few million of these magnificent animals. By the 1880’s, there were only a few thousand left. Massive hunting throughout the 19th century had almost entirely decimated this once seemingly innumerable population.

Sadly, the world seems to be ‘going the way of the buffalo’.

We have all heard about the environment taking a turn for the worse over the last few decades, with global warming, depletion of natural resources, deforestation, species going extinct and people living in ever more hazardous environments.

On a human level, we seem to be hell-bent on stripping away much of our humanity. Forced labour & modern slavery, the poor getting poorer while the rich get richer, wars that – unlike two hundred years ago – primarily seem to affect non-combatants in stead of the soldiers fighting them, rampant corruption, increases in suicides, drug use, teenage pregnancies, the list is endless.

Many of the reasons why we are destroying this planet and the people that live on it have to do with an unbridled quest for profit. But at the root of that & at the root of virtually all other problems lies an even deeper problem: we are cut off from our Creator. We are now living a life that is not life in it’s fullest.