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Tell me what you eat and I tell you who you are!

Sylvia — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:56:18 +0000

This blog post is about meat, fish and veggies and how you can easily make better choices.

Meat
Am not going to go into the environmental effects of meat production (especially red meat), but rest assured it takes a lot more energy and causes more pollution to produce. For more info, you can start reading here or here.
Against what you may expect I am not going to advertise going all vegetarian. Why? Because I believe that everybody’s body works differently and that sustainable solutions mean that they have to be a free choice.
Take me for example, I consider myself 95% vegetarian (sorry if you are a 100% vegetarian and this offended you), but this is my sustainable approach (I don’t care if my food has touched meat (makes it way easier to be invited for dinner), I eat fish (whilst recently paying attention to MSC..) and I will have duck for Christmas!)
Somebody once told me rather than buying the cheapest meat to eat every day, he now buys quality meat to eat once a week and I thought that was a great approach. As a side effect he discovered his creativity in the kitchen (and his taste butts )

Fish
According to Greenpeace “More than 70 percent of the world’s fisheries are ‘fully exploited’, ‘over exploited’ or ‘significantly depleted’ (click here for more info), but there are still fish that can be consumed with a good conscience. The Marine Stewards Council is labelling them with their MSC logo, so keep your eye out for that! But even outside the labelled items there are better and worse choices, click here for a printable overview (which by the way fits conveniently into any wallet).

Vegetables
The less vegetables (or any food for that matter) travel to get onto our plate, the better – not just because of the transport costs, chances are they will be fresher (vitamins!) as well. Here two charts (pdf, html) for which vegetables are in season (paying attention to low prices in supermarkets and Belgian product logo gives you a pretty good idea as well ). You can even order a calendar for 2011 with this info at info@bruxellesenvironnement.be (pdf version here). Alternatively there are the deliveries of organic and seasonal fruit right to your doorstep.

Bon appetit,
Sylvia

Links:
Organic food deliveries in Brussels (of course there are more.. but I don’t know them :-S):
http://www.vevyweron.be
http://www.reason2.be

Bees help us fertilise crops, let us help them survive

Sylvia — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:33:43 +0000

Nature is pretty to look at, nature is an inspiration for science, nature provides a lot of things that would cost us dearly to do by ourselves or would frankly be impossible to do at all.
Think about the bats that eat mosquitoes (up to their own body weight each day), worms and slugs that recycle organic waste and loosen the ground or bees that fertilize our crops..

Now, some of them are in a bit of trouble, the bats in Belgium have troubles finding caves to hibernate over winter and the bees are globally on a very steep incline because of use of pesticides. They are pollinating 90% of our plants! And “Multiple scientific studies blame one group of toxic pesticides for their rapid demise..”

As for the bees there is something you can do for them.. Avaaz, a global web movement, which helps enforcing environment friendly policies through petitions, is currently collecting signatures to hopefully provoke a global ban on pesticides. I signed already, why don’t you sign it as well? http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_bees/

thanks,
Sylvia

PS: Avaaz also deals with human rights issues.

Permaculture – or – the garden that takes care of itself

Sylvia — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 07:00:09 +0000

Lately I have heard the word Permaculture mentioned more often, but did you know that the first book on it was written before I was even born! More than 30 years ago the Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren were looking into ways of permanent agriculture (hence the name Permaculture), for the industrial agriculture was bad for soil fertility, but good for pests (which then were fought of with chemical warfare).

So what is all this about?
=> It’s about increasing biodiversity, which amongst other things stops pests (and us worrying about how to get rid of them), but provides us with a good variety of food throughout the year.
=> It’s about studying the land carefully and making adjustments that rainwater will be available to the plants for longer, thus making plants happy (and us too as we don’t have to water them ourselves).
=> It’s about letting newspaper and other mulches fight against weeds (rather than us doing so in back-breaking activities).
=> It’s about allowing certain weeds to grow for a while as they provide nutrition to the other plants.
=> It’s about even more than that, I think it’s certainly about time that I bought my mother (who loves her garden) a book on this (so she will not ask me to plug weed again next time I’m in town).

To sum it up, if permaculture has been set up carefully it will behave like a little paradise without depleting the nutrition, without letting wind and water take the soil away (which in turn could ruin water systems by changing their nutrient level) and all of that with hardly any human effort.

Cheers,
Sylvia

Video clips with the father of Permaculture
Wikipedia on Permaculture

Organicvision: On a world tour for Sustainability

Guest Blogger — Sun, 30 May 2010 11:33:01 +0000

Organicvision – a world tour dedicated to sustainable lifestyle
(by Johanna from Organicvision)

Curious about alternatives to mainstream urban lifestyle?
Wondering how our society can change to become ecologically viable?

This is precisely what we want to find out on our journey around the world visiting 30 exciting projects covering permaculture, eco-construction, herbology, self-sufficiency, homesteading, transition towns, eco villages etc.

We, that is Joanna and Franck- a German/Polish-French couple in their thirties, living in Brussels.

Some years ago, if somebody had asked us about the future, never we would have predicted that we would quit our jobs one day and do a project dedicated to sustainability…

So how do we ended up there? Seeing films like “An inconvenient truth” or documentaries like “How Cuba survived peak oil”, reading Hervé Kempf´s books and being part of the economic crisis, made us understand that our modern society is on the wrong track.

We decided to rethink our future. After having visited several organic farms in Belgium and Spain in 2009, we were captivated by the generosity and enthusiasm of the people we met there. Compared to the authentic values these people were living, our office jobs, our hectic everyday life seemed fake and meaningless.

Many discussions and sleepless nights later, our decision was clear: We wanted to change our life.

Even more: We wanted other people to discover that it is worth to live closer to nature. But how do you do that? Our solution: Travel various countries and meet positive role models, work with them and share their inspiring ideas with others via interviews, video clips and pictures on a blog!

To this end, in October 2009 we also set up an association – Organicvision – as we wanted to show our sincere long-term investment in promoting sustainable lifestyle and setting up a network of activists in this field as our project develops.

Then we started to seriously prepare our world tour, which will start very soon with a survival training in Belgium followed by a permaculture design course in Southern France.

Want to join the adventure? Meet us at www.organicvision.org

Is packaging part of the problem or part of the solution?

Mira Bangel — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:16:30 +0000

One of our contacts from EUROPEN recommended this video which reflects in a viral – web friendly way the purpose of packaging.

When it comes to discussing sustainability and product development, packaging is often seen as an easy target for policy makers. There’s a public perception that packaging equals waste. So the more packaging, the more waste is being created. Only few people take into account that packaging also prevents waste and keeps the product safe in a purposeful way (if designed smartly).

Have a look at the video clip below developed by Elipso (the French plastic & flexible packaging association) that addresses this topic.

Open Source Ecology

Mira Bangel — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:07:59 +0000

Open Source Ecology takes an open source approach to technology development with the aim to empower individuals to develop their own self-sufficient ecovillages without depending on supply chains, trademarks & corporations.

‘Factor E Farm’ provides a tool set that makes it possible for individuals to become self-sufficient. Tool set’s include instructions on how to create construction machines, tractors, solarpanels etc. at a quality level that comes close to commercial machines. All tool sets for open source technology are being published on the open source ecology wiki so others can use and further develop the material. Watch this video to see some of their machines in practise.

I’m quite impressed by this approach since I do personally believe that the open source culture can be transferred to many different value-driven fields. Ecological living is an area where concrete solutions and expertise could easily create benefit by being spread more openly via the Internet.

In the area of sustainable development there seems to be a big disconnect between corporate sustainability communication and actual solutions that are being applied. Maybe there is something even bigger corporations could learn from this simple concept & collaborative approach.

More information:
Listen to this podcast or read the 5Minute intro below:
Factor E Farm (about)

World Ocean Day – June 8th & Fête de l’Environnement Brussels June 7th

Sylvia — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 08:36:42 +0000

The ocean is big and can take any kind of abuse!

Ok, now seriously:
“The oceans and seas are a source of life on our planet. They cover almost three quarters of the Earth’s surface and contain some 90% of the biosphere. Their protection is essential to the future of our planet. Pollution of our seas and destructive fishing practices are anathema to that. Our oceans and seas also play a strategic role in sustaining climate and weather patterns, distributing solar energy, and absorbing carbons.” (Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas)

Three quarters of fishing grounds are almost depleted. Rising water levels inflicted by global warming are threatening sensitive corals and low lands. Now I won’t blog more about it as others can do this better. Here a good overview by a member of the Ocean Project and here more on the topic by the following organisations UN, the European Commission or GreenPeace. You can sign a petition with GreenPeace on protecting 40% of the world’s oceans as marine reserves.

The Ocean Project has a list of events around the globe, nothing though for Belgium. However, Sunday June 7th is la Fête de l’Environnement 2009 organised at Parc Cinquantenaire by Bruxelles Environnement, where you can meet actors of the environmental field. The Brussels Aquarium will also have a stand there. In the evening there will be a free concert.

Lorien – a Belgian ecovillage in the making

Sylvia — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:55:34 +0000

Together with Mira and four others we visited a co-housing/ecovillage project in Poncelle, Province of Luxemburg, Belgium this past weekend.

Imagine a little village in the least polluted areas of Belgium on a sunny day. You arrive around lunchtime and have lunch with Michel, who three years ago had the idea of starting up a co-housing project and acquired a piece of land with similarly minded people. He tells you about his vision and even though it is obvious that much work is still needed, you can see it: a place of happy co-housing. Everybody has their own house and income, but there is also a big common house, that can be used at any time by Lorien’s people for parties or for workshops, but can also be rented out to generate a bit more income.

Lorien’s land came with a few unfinished buildings and land of 1,5ha. The potential is plenty, but the money is not. So until more people join, i.e. buy a piece of it, finishing the houses needs to wait. In the meantime the garden can be put into place.

So this is what we helped with: we cleared an area in the garden, planted some vegetables, cleared up another area for a neighbour’s donkeys and fenced it off, so they can graze on the long grass. Soon there will be a workshop that will take the development of the garden to the next level.

The weekend was not all about work though. After a dinner which some of us prepared, we sat around a campfire until one in the morning talking over beer and wine. We all felt it was interesting to learn more about the project, but also putting up fences, etc. together with friends and others brought up interesting conversations. This combined with camping and fire made for a great weekend and I am looking forward to visit again. Would you want to come along next time? If so, please comment on this page and we will let you know the details. If you do not have a tent, there are also caravans that you can sleep in.

For more info on Lórien, check here: Lorien & ecovillage profile

Dirty energy

Sylvia — Tue, 12 May 2009 06:22:11 +0000

“All this talk about dirty energy?! In my house the energy comes from the power plug and there is no mess at all!”

Great! But how does it get into you power plug?

I live in Brussels, Belgium. Now, the energy market is open and you can choose from several providers, such as Belpower or Lampiris? There is also still the only former provider Electrabel, which claims they are green, but are they really? I found this nice URL that gives an overview of what energy provider options we have here in Belgium. Money talks and if we give it to the right solution..

I switched to Lampiris right after the markets were opened, they were not just alot greener than Electrabel, but also cheaper and it was real easy too, all I had to do is to sign up for Lampiris and they did all the rest!

If you know of a similar site for other countries, please do post them.

Green construction and design

Mira Bangel — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:24:26 +0000

If it is a low impact home in hobbit style, an original treehouse, or a rotating house.

Have a look at this blog entry by Designpedia. Some of the designs are real eyeopeners. Enjoy!