YouPEC; the last days

YouPEC is over. 150 people from all over Europe are sitting in the dark (partly because they are in the black gap after YouPEC, partly because they are such extreme hippies they don’t use electricity for lighting). What to do after YouPEC? Don’t worry, the’re is life after YouPEC.

All the great ideas for projects that came up during the open space workshops have to be executed. From bike tours and a green traveling website to the follow up of the declaration. Someone even came up with the idea to start a network for lazy people. I don’t know if YouPEC is the right place for this idea since generally these activists are quite active.

But before we start thinking of what life after YouPEC looks like, let’s frist go back to the last days of the conference. I’ll start with day number 5: the big action.

I woke up at 5.30 am, sleep deprivation is a phenomena that by now we all know well. During the whole week there was not one night where I slept a decent 8 hours, and this goes for almost all YouPECistans. It makes you giggle at anything, so this might be the explanation for the great atmosphere during YouPEC. I went with Kim, Sander and Victor to the Hague to set up the stage for the action. The van had a radio that only played upbeat ‘bad’ songs we somehow knew by heart. With loud music and hands up in the air as a couple of gangsters we entered the quare in front of the building where all the action happens in the field of politics.

After a while we heard drums and people screaming, and shortly after that we saw 150 pair of green feet. First thing that crossed my mind was that there must have been an outbreak of a dangerous virus that starts attacking your body at the feet. But then I remembered: we all painted our feet green as a representative of our European Ecological footprint we want to reduce. Benoît started slogans like: “Please eat less meat, we will eat less meat!” and “No more pollution, we need a revolution!”. The screaming, whistling and stamping of the green feet made a nice picture together with signs like a painting of the world with the lines: “Haven’t you heard? We’ve only got one”.

Linda handed the declaration to the Dutch state Secretary of European affairs, Mr. Timmermans, one Dutch representative of European Commissioner  for Environment Stavros Dimas and one representative of the state secretary of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment. Their reactions were rather positive. Mr. Timmermans promised to send the declaration to all member states of the EU and ask them if they would react to it point by point. Less promising was the reaction to the proposal to stimulate a reduction in meat consumption. “we can’t tell people what to do, this is a personal choice” he said. Then why do we tell people to exercise? Why are we not allowed to smoke in bars anymore starting july 1st? Isn’t that personal choice as well? I do not see the difference.

Back in Bakkum tiredness washed over us and most people laid down in the grass and did nothing. We still had another open space session which went surprisingly well. Then it was time to look back on YouPEC in a plenarary session with movies and stories of the week.

Now there was only one thing left to do: party like hell and dance till our green feet were too tired to carry us.

YouPECistan Sigrid

YouPEC day 4: We’ve got a declaration!

After hours and hours of dicussion, writing and editing we have finally made it: the declaration is ready! I just signed the document together with all the other YouPEC participants. Now let’s hope the European Commission and member states will seriously read it and take some action. The main goal stated in the declaration is to reduce the European ecological footprint. There are many ways in which you can reach this goal, we’ve come up with some recommendations which we think will have a big impact on reducing European ecological footprint. The main recommendations are to reduce meat consumption, prevent waste, produce only sustainable biofuels and raise awareness on sustainable consumption.

Oh, I will never ever again be a member of a declaration group. It was an awesome once in a lifetime experience, but never again.

Yesterday between the declaration crazyness I took a break. We were all going to the beach. It was great. A long line of YouPECistans walking through the dunes. People were racing to be the first to dive into the sea. The water was nice and cool, just what we needed after heated discussions. We were playing games in the water, sunbathing and playing soccer. The rain couldn’t stop us from having fun on the beach. Something that always happens when you go to the beach is that afterwards you are covered in sand. Wrestling and rolling off of the dunes might have helped a bit get sand even between the buttocks.

Wednesday there was also another round of capacity building workshops and after the beach there was a pub quiz and painting of small flags with personal cries for a more sustainable world which together will form one big flag.

Today the people of YouPEC were spacing, not because they were smoking pot or eating mushrooms but because they were coming up with new ideas for activities, campaigns, projects etc. They did this in the form of open space, a way of brainstorming that is very free. You can walk everywhere, give input to different groups or, if you are very passionate on a specific topic, stay in one place and work it out. Since I have not been spacing (I’m a very decent girl) I can’t tell you what the results of the open space were, maybe in the next update.

Tomorrow is this big actions where we will go to the Hague and hand over the declaration, I’ll tell you later. The thing I can already tell you is that the feet of all YouPEC participant will be green.

At the moment there are movie showings of ‘meat the truth’ and ‘the corporation’. I think I’ll join them and fall asleep on the sounds of pigs being slaughtered and babbling of big people of big corporations.

YouPECistan Sigrid

YouPEC day 2

Energy, that is what we have here. Not polluting fossil fuel energy but positive energy. The last two days we had a lot of intersting workshops, lectures and discussions.  As I described before, the first round of workshops was on economy and how the world works. I was at the workshop of Aart Huijg on ‘why is economic growth is needed?’. We saw an intersting figure with GDP (measure for economic growth) on the x-axes and quality of life on the y-axis. There is a linear relationship up to the point that your basic needs are fulfilled (you have a roof above your head, and food in your tummy). After that the line flattenes, which means that more money does not make you happier after a while. So luxury goods do not make you happy. But if you are starting to throw away your camera’s, computers and icecubemaking machines I should stop you. Because if the GDP is not increasing, people get depressed.

Aart also talked about that certain things are not incorporated in our economic system and it might be good if they are. Put a price on global warming, that might be a real start to combat the problem. This may lead to the situation that products that are more attributing to global warming will cost more and people will buy the greener product.

Dinner was awesome, which propably means that we will all be a bit heavier leaving Bakkkum then when we came here. This also means that the bus, train, plane and car will need more fuel to bring us back home. So I’m not sure if we will totally achieve the ‘practise what you preach’ idea.

In the evening we had speeddating. We were running and shaking hands, talking to people whos names you can’t prenounce and trying to remember them.

After all this love most people had freetime. So they could have deeper discussions after the quick speeddates. But if you are a declaration group member, free time does not exist. We had a meeting in which we brainstormed on what to put into the declaration.

Day 2

The first word that comes to mind when decribing this day is information overload. Certainly not in a bad day, it was very intesting.

Two rounds of workshops; ‘consumers and how people behave’ and ‘food’. Most workshops on food eventually came up with meat. Our meat consumption is crazy. Producing meat is very inëfficient; for 5 kilo’s of soy you put in an animal you’ll get 1 kilo of meat. If we would directly eat the soy, will we still have a world food crises?

We also had an assignment: to come up with strategies for change. This was in the light of consumer behaviour and how to change this behaviour to become more sustainable.

Then there were capacity building workshops, for example: how can you get volenteers for your organization?

At the same time we had another declaration group meeting. After a long heated discussion we decided that the main goal carried out in the declaration will be to reduce the European ecological footprint. After that we started mind mapping, a programm to have your ideas digital, get a clear overview and group ideas. Now let’s see what happends from now on.

Right now I’m watching the cultural evening while wrinting this blog. The term free time does not exist in my dictionary. A few members of the declaration group are sitting next to me, processing the mindmapping outcomes.

Talk to you again on the next update.

YouPECistan Sigrid

YouPEC 2008: we have begon!

YouPEC (Young perspetive on consumption) is a European conference on sustainable consumption with participants from all over Europe. We are here in Bakkum, the Netherlands (nicely situated near the beach) to follow workshops, have discussions and write a declaration that will give policy recommendations to the commission and parliament of the European Union.

My name is Sigrid Vorrink, I am on the board of Young Friends of the Earth Europe, the organization that organized this conference together with LHUMP. I will gin ve you (hopefully daily) updates on the conference. So even though you can’t be here for whatever reason, this will give you an idea how it is like.

The main organizers (like Job) were here in the lovely Bakkum allready on saturday but the 30 volenteers (me included) arrived sunday and we have made everything ready for the confernce. To make sure confusion is elimmited, all the different rooms were assigned collors. We’ve got the orange and yellow tent, the green diner, purple hall and (the prettiest of all) the red tent. One big Beneton party I’d say. Of course we are sort of discriminating against the collorblind. But then again; can you be really green if you are collorblind?

Let’s return for a moment to the red tent. It is the most buetifull one of all (and I’m not saying this just because I worked on it the whole day). Me, Sylvia and Victor have carefully blown up the red balloons, place banners and placed the string of lamps. That last job took us hours since electricity is hard to come by here in Bakkum (maybe they are trying to be sustainable in their own way) and one of the lampstrings was broken. Afterward we heard we will not be in the red tent in the evening. (WHY did we hang all these lamps!!!!????). So I don’t care what happends tonight, but Sylvia, Victor and myself will be sitting in the pretty red tent enjoing the light strings….

Dinner was delicious, we have a special cooking team superdeluxe fantastic. There is one superoverall cook, he is named Pieter and you can recognise him as the tall guy with the skirt and no badge, since he thinks everyone should now the chef. (Our cook is to arrogant to ware a badge, oh well, the food is good).

Today (monday), the participants are arriving. I allready met with people form Cypres, Poland, Ireland, Finland, Belgium… Oh I feel sooooo international. We haven’t started yet and are allready running behind schedule. This is due to the late arrival of the participants, but everything wil turn out fine in the end.

In a few moments we will start with the planerary welcomming of the people and then the first workshop roung; Econimics and how the world works. I will moderate the workshop ‘Why is economic growth needed?’, let’s see if we’ll find an answer to that question. After each worksop session we’ll have a discussion and this will give us input for the declaration.

This week promises interesting discussions, international experiences, not so much sleep but most of all lots of fun.

YouPECistan Sigrid

Do you know what they call a quarter pounder in Paris?

Meer grappig groen uit de UK:

Do the green thing.

Engelse site met van alles grappigs Persiflage op Pulp Fiction, prachtige video’s en naakte, eh, ‘pinguins’…

The Climate Challenge Game

Speel de president van de European Nations en probeer een eeuw je zetel te behouden. Een prachtig webspel waarin je kan spelen dat je president bent en je moet jongleren met economie, klimaatveranderingen, de gunst van het volk en regelrechte rampen. Lukthet jou om populair te blijven bij de bevolking en het broeikaseffect het hoofd te bieden?

Adje? Bloot!?!?

Een blog over opmerkelijke milieunieuwtjes kan natuurlijk niet zonder een verwijzing naar de Vegan Streaker! Dus, bij deze een filmpje met zijn beroemde optreden bij Paul de Leeuw

Wat vinden jullie, verdient ‘ie een nominatie voor meest sexy vegetarier? Mischien moeten we dat aan Paul de Leeuw vragen, -volgens mij heeft hij daar beter zicht op!-

Na zijn actie in het hol van de leeuw, voelde deze strikte vegetarier zich blijkbaar in zijn hemd gezet en ging verhaal halen bij (oh, ironie, what’s in a name?!) mr. Frank Visser. Zie hier de uitspraak…

Maar, niemand maakt mij wat wijs. Het kan toch niet anders ofThe Vegan Streaker is niemand minder dan Adje - zonder oranje hemd, dan…

Nerds will save the world

Klimaatverandering,… Werelwijde Klimaatdestabilisatie is een betere naam. Een eenvoduige YouTube video die alle argumenten van klimaatsceptici heel eenvoudig wegveegt. Geniaal, eenvoudig, effectief.  http://omtersaaist.net/2007/12/14/nerds-will-save-the-word/

Klimaatheld

Daar sta je dan. Met je glitterbril en groene kaplaarsjes aan op het plein voor de tweede kamer. “Waar ben ik godsnaam mee bezig?” schiet er even door mijn hoofd. Maar dan weet ik het weer: oh ja, ik ben verkleed als ‘klimaatheld’. Om de mensen duidelijk te maken dat er nu wat moet gebeuren tegen de klimaatverandering voordat het te laat is. Voordat de zeespiegel zo ver stijgt dat grote gebieden overstromen. Voordat het begrip ‘klimaatvluchteling’ wordt opgenomen in de dikke van Dale. Voordat woestijngebieden zich uitbreiden als olievlekken. Voordat ik me af moet vragen of ik nog wel kinderen moet nemen…

Daarom vraag ik met mijn wapperende cape en groene handschoen mensen te tekenen voor een klimaatwet in Nederland. Een wet waarin staat dat we elk jaar de uitstoot van broeikasgassen met minstens 3% zullen verminderen en ontwikkelingslanden ondersteunen bij de gevolgen van klimaatverandering. Met een wet is voor het bedrijfsleven ook duidelijk wat het beleid is voor de langere periode. Investeren in duurzame producten en projecten willen ze namelijk wel, maar dan moet de regelgeving niet elk jaar veranderen.

Ik heb al getekend. Anders moet ik straks miljoenen klimaatvluchtelingen gaan redden. En deze klimaatheld zit liever in haar luie stoel met een kopje thee en een goed boek…

Ook tekenen voor een krachtige klimaatwet in Nederland? Ga naar www.klimaatwet.nu

Je kunt ook vrienden worden met de klimaatheld op hyves: http://klimaatheld.hyves.nl/

en van de klimaatwethyve: http://klimaatwet.hyves.nl/

Vluggertje over Bali

In Bali is het bijna stilzwijgend erkend dat CO2-uitstoot inderdaad leidt opwarming van de aarde. Dat is een hele vooruitgang, want het betekend dat die discussie alvast “gewonnen” is. Maar er is geen overeenstemming bereikt over concrete besparingsdoelstelling. Toch lijkt zelfs in Amerika het tij nu te keren, nu ze op het laatste overstag gingen na een hartstochtelijk pleidooi van de voorzitter van VN. Luister naar een interview met prof. Pier Vellinga, die voorspeld dat er na oorlogen over olie ook oorlogen over CO2 kunnen komen.

Milieubewuste kleding

Voordat je een kledingstuk in de winkel koopt, is er al heel wat gebeurd. Er zijn planten of dieren die het ruwe materiaal leveren. Dit materiaal is na het oogsten bewerkt, gesponnen, geverfd, geknipt, genaaid, etc. Wanneer jij in die winkel staat zie je daar op het label niets van. Aan de productie van textiel kleven aanzienlijke milieubezwaren. Zo worden in de katoenteelt veel bestrijdingsmiddelen gebruikt en bij het verven en andere bewerkingen van textiel worden milieuschadelijke stoffen gebruikt.

Als consument heb je een stem,  je kunt zelf kiezen welke kleding je wel en niet koopt. Door eerlijke kleding te kopen moedig je bedrijven aan hun verantwoordelijkheid te nemen en te investeren in productiemethoden natuur en milieu respecteren.

Wanneer is je kleding biologisch?

IFOAM heeft de basisnormen hiervoor opgesteld. Hierin zijn ook sociale en ethische aspecten opgenomen. Dat wil onder meer zeggen:

• dat aan eisen wat betreft het milieu wordt voldaan;

• dat de natuurlijke kringloop zoveel mogelijk in stand wordt gehouden;

• dat er geen kunstmest of chemische bestrijdingsmiddelen worden gebruikt;

• dat er geen geen chemisch/synthetische geur-, kleur- en smaakstoffen en/of conserveringsmiddelen worden toegevoegd

• dat de bodem gezond en vruchtbaar wordt gehouden met biologische compost en dat dieren een goede verzorging krijgen.

Wat gebeuren er voor interessante dingen in kledingland?

• Fleece wordt gemaakt van PET-flessen. Toen ze dat hoorden bij coca-cola dachten ze: daar kunnen we wat mee! Ze ontwikkelen nu t-shirts en petten die gemaakt zijn van PET-flessen. Voor één t-shirt of pet heb je 5 flessen nodig.

• C&A laat het er ook niet bij zitten. Hun nieuwe concept We C&Are (dat klinkt toch een stuk beter dan “mooi! van C&A”?) behelst een complete strategie inclusief tasjes van gerecycled plastic, een CO2 neutrale winkel en kledingstukken van biologisch katoen. Wanneer? Begin 2008 zijn alle katoenkledingstukken van gecertificeerd biologische katoen. Twaalf en een half miljoen stuks! Zonder dat de consument er meer voor gaat betalen. En dit heeft niks te maken met de duurzaamheidshype, verzekert het concern. “Onze klanten verwachten dit van ons”.

• De H&M was al even bezig. Biologisch katoen blijkt een succes. Het bedrijf biedt ook in de herfst een collectie van biologische katoen aan. De vraag naar deze katoen die is gecontroleerd door de Control Union op gebruik van pesticiden tijdens de teelt stijgt. Voor 2007 wordt 1100 ton verwacht in plaats van 30 in 2006.

Geïnspireerd? Kijk op www.kledingchecker.nl of www.goedewaar.nl voor meer info. Voor duurzame kledingmerken ga je naar: www.made-by.nl