dutch marginal

did you ever read any book of jules verne, or do you just know the stories from childhood? anyway, i decided to read the two books on captain nemo, travelling 20,000 miles under sea. i had difficulties finding the motivation to read through the first half of the first book, but then i got caught by the verne fever. the books are filled with future, considering they have been written in the 19th century. they remind me of the drawings and sketchings of leonardo da vinci. and, what a coincidence. i just read an article in the newspaper on plagues of jellyfish, while verne already predicts that plagues will occur in the future due to the overfishing of other fishes and whales for example. the balance will become disturbed and so it is. how can we ever say now, that we did not realize the consequences of our fishing and hunting, if even more than 100 years ago it was already predicted.

did you ever hear of regrowing new vegetables from the scraps? i just came by regrowing carrot tops into new plants and discovered that you can regrow so much. of course we tried out seeds from vegetables and fruits before, even grew our own date palm but from scraps is something new to us. check out the internet if you are interested in doing so too.

at the canals in my home town you can find a lot of lime trees (tilia). beautiful trees with healthy fruits to use for tea and flowers that bees make delicious honey from. but as i was biking under the trees this week, my tires got stuck to the street a bit. i remembered the car being parked under it would turn into an dirty old car, as if parked there for a long time, in a few days. so i decided to exactly find out if the sticky street and dirty cars came from insects in the trees or from the trees itself. it seems that in particular, aphids are attracted by the rich supply of sap of the leaves. in turn, they are "farmed" by ants for the production of the sap which the ants collect for their own use. the result, a dripping of excess sap (honeydew) onto the lower branches and leaves, streets and cars. and as this honeydew is often covered with a black mould, a black sticky layer is the result. happily enough this sticky layer is only annoying to us while the trees do not ...

did you already notice the new project from greenpeace:  GREENBEES sign the petition if you feel like we really have to help the bees adopt a bee perhaps ( this link for dutch people) use organic seeds, buy organic food and make your balcony or garden bee-friendly guide to make a bees paradise (in dutch):  bees paradise and more tips (in english):  happy bees

i was wondering if all the little pieces of fabric i finally throw away after reusing as much as possible could serve a purpose. see above. quite some challenge. inspiration came from  this website .

microsoft is producing smart chips by building a datacenter besides greenhouses. the datacenter needs to be cooled and the greenhouses need to be warmed. bell pepper growers work with energy from cogeneration. the datacenter uses the extra cogenerated energy for cooling and gives its residual heat to the pepper growers. chips with pepper and tomato  (in Dutch)

worried about the smog that is taking over the sun in crowded places? check out this project by a Dutch artist and his partners: studio roosegaarde but rather then need an ion cannon for some clean air in parks, prevent the uprising smog, by cycling as much as possible and living sustainable. force industry around you to be as clean as can be.

more and more you read about companies reusing trash (from the oceans too) pharell williams will work with Adidas on a new collections, using his bionic yarn, from ocean plastic: to the bionic yarn website willeke nugteren is starting up 'bali plastik recycling'. at more and more beaches they collect old nets you can reap and put there to be reused. be sure to use as less plastic bottles as possible and otherwise reuse them and then let them be recycled. some ideas: urban vertical garden and many more ideas

an informative website regarding living more green, fair and fine. in dutch though:  www.hetkanWel.net nice articles like the change that everyone picking up one piece of litter everyday would make. or all kind of recipes for using old bread.

op de ranglijst van duurzame energieleveranciers, samengesteld door o.a. Greenpeace staan de kleine leveranciers Raedthuys en Windunie bovenaan. Eneco is met de vierde plaats de beste grote duurzame energieleverancier. Iets om te onthouden als je weer mooie aanbiedingen voorbij ziet komen. Greenpeace artikel over de ranglijst