I thought this was quite an innovative way of using the toilet and thought i should share that…..

Since i don’t really have that kind of toilet i cant really built that in my house, sadly enough.. But if you need help building it in yours?? let me know, would be fun.

We talked about green energy and about how with a bit a time and a few mouse clicks you can contribute to the “right” direction. Now I would like to draw you attention to a different but in my opinion equally important way to do good.
(Somehow it’s funny, cause to do good in these cases merely means not to do bad. Anyway, it’s pretty pathetic to talk in terms of good and bad, right or wrong etc. I just think who ever is reading this and is willing to do something will agree with me that in order to speed up and simplify this text a little, we can use such vocabulary.)

I would like to talk about ‘banking’.

Recently I saw documentary on the dutch TV called ‘Zembla’.
It was about banks in The Netherlands and what they do with their money. It was horrible. Not the documentary, but what they found out. I mean, I guess I kind of knew that there are dirty things happening in the world of banking. “Where there is a lot of money there is mostly not much conscious and humanity.” But this!

The big banks of Holland, ING (Postbank) Fortis, Rabobank, ABN AMRO have their hands basically in everything you don’t want to get involved with.
It starts with arms. All of them are investing their money in companies that produce weapon, bombs and mines! What ever you say about war, weapons etc but mines are in my opinion one of the worst ideas to hurt people. Have you every seen the pictures of the kids that stepped on one and got their legs ripped off? Often those mines stay in an area for many years even though the conflict has stopped already.
These reporters from the ‘Zembla’ found out that all of the above-mentioned banks, even though they might deny it are investing their money in producing such things.

Further Zembla (or to be precise a guy, called D. Pols from ‘Milieudefensie’, another dutch environmental group) did research to which extant those banks contribute to global warming. As you might expect they all invest in energy source such as coal, gas and nuclear power. And it’s not only peanuts they put into those cooperation.

To give an example:
Exxon Mobil is a cooperation based in the USA that produces oil on the big scale. Exxon Mobil is known to be very indifferent towards environmental issues when it comes to exploring oil sources and producing it. ING (Postbank) is investing more than 1 milliard (1.000.000.000) Euro in Exxon Mobil. That is more than what the entire world is investing into alternative energy source all together!!!

This gives you a picture of the proportions we are talking about. I am sure they are all also investing in alternative energy source to polish their image towards the outside,
but if you compare the quantities…

And it’s not all; the documentary gives other examples of awful, damaging projects in the world that would not have been possible without the financial support of dutch banks. It basically covers the whole range of things you don’t want to support. It goes from weapons to environmental issues to suppressing of ‘Fair Trade’ and children labor in third world countries.

The documentary was about the dutch banks and broadcasted in The Netherlands, but to right away avoid any misunderstanding, I am pretty sure that almost every big bank in any country of the world is no better than these banks in The Netherlands.

And now I am coming to key point of this article.
The money they are using is not theirs, it’s ours. We all lend our money to the banks so that they can administrate and grow it at the best possible rate.

At the best possible rate?
Even though it inclines big damage to the environment and other people in the world?

And here we are, innocent citizens who just wanted to give the little savings we have to the bank, so that over time the little maybe becomes a little more. And suddenly by reading this, there is no point anymore in saying ‘I didn’t know about it’, suddenly the responsibility kicks in, we become alliances with the banks, we support the production of weapons and mines, pollute the environment and abuse cheap labor in poor countries.

Well, yes, until now. But since we know now, let’s do something.
What can we do?

First of all, we can complain. We can ask our bank what they are investing in and demand that our money will not be used for such things.
In Europe banks usually claim that what they do with the money we lend them should be kept secret, so that other competing banks cannot take advantage of that information. In the US on the other hand the banks are forced by law to publish what they invested in. I believe that transparency is vital. If an institution is asking us, the costumers to trust them and lend them our money, we are giving power into their hands. I think we should have the right to know what they are doing with the power we give them.

Second and in my opinion most effective, we can change to another bank. This depends very much on the country you are living in, but there are a few banks that guarantee you to only invest in ‘good’ stuff. Transparency in their investments is an important factor for those banks. According to the ‘Zembla’ the two ‘good’ banks in Holland, Triodos and ASN are investing 100 times more money in alternative energy than the ‘bad’ ones together.
If there is such a bank in your country I would advice to first open a saving account. After all this is probably the biggest amount of money we have and usually meant to stay with the bank for a period of time. For everybody that has doubts about economical profitability, I can assure you that at least in The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Spain the percentage you get on your savings is most of the time equal to conventional banks. For practical reasons they are all offering online banking. Transferring money from your former conventional account to your saving account at the new bank is as quick as it was when it stayed within one bank.
If you live in Holland and you want to abandon your bank completely (which would be probably the best), you can change to Triodos Bank. Triodos is offering a ‘normal’ account with a bankcard and cash-withdraw in all Europe at the same price as any other bank in Holland. The only disadvantage is that there is probably hardly any service point within your range.
I know that in Germany the GLS Bank is offering a similar service, though I am not familiar with the conditions.

For everybody that has an account at ING (Postbank), ABN AMRO, Fortis or Rabobank, you can use this link and complain with a pre-formulated letter again with only a few mouse clicks.
http://www.nietmetmijngeld.nl/page/homepage

For everybody who speaks dutch here the link to see ‘zembla’:
www.uitzendinggemist.nl/index.php/aflevering?aflID=4766349&md5=97497fd0942b294810a91c0370637aeb

Here the links to the ‘good’ banks:
Holland:
www.triodos.nl
www.asn-bank.nl
Germany:
www.triodos.de
www.umwelt-bank.de
www.gls-bank.de
Belgium:
www.triodos.be
Spain:
www.tridos.es

I’ve found politics quite interesting for quite some time now and that’s why today i decided to join a political party. Eventhough it’s difficult to find a party which whom i completely agree with, i thought it’s better to join and try to influence things from the inside then stand and the side and complain. So now i’m a member from a political party! Feels nice…

Internationally there are also some interesting political developments,  i think everybody noticed that in America there has been some movement lately. I’ve been following as much as i can and i’m quite clear who i support. But since i can’t vote, there isn’t much i can do. I’m not going to discuss about the different candidates, because there is too much to say, and i’m not good enough with words. There is a lot out there anyway if you’re interested. But i’m going to share a little video here. It’s very close to a commercial. But wanted to share it anyway:

Check it out here: yeswecansong

I know you all heard about it, but I still would like to talk about saving light bulbs. I recently read some facts about them that might sound convincing to all the people that are still holding on to the old lights.

First of all some numbers and hypothetic calculations:

A normal light bulb is using 95% of the necessary energy to warm up the light bulb and only 5% to actually produce light. A saving bulb in comparison to that is up to six times more efficient.

In the European Union 14% of all electricity is used for light. If people in all of the 150 million households of the EU would exchange three 60 watt light bulbs by three 12 watt saving lights they could reduce the production of CO2 by 7 million tons per year. To compensate that amount of pollution, one would have to grow 150 million trees every year.

I know this are a big numbers and anyway none of us is 150 million households but I believe this is another little step to contribute to the right direction. I think it’s about doing your share instead of leaning back and complaining about the others such as politicians, industrial managers etc.

To everybody that is not convinced by this numbers I can only say, ‘if you don’t want to do it for the environment, do it for your own pocket’.

A saving light is saving up to 80% of energy, energy you are paying for. I also understand if people are reluctant to buy them since they cost between 5 and 15 euro instead of 80 cent. To those people probably (don’t know and) don’t take into account that there lifetime is with eight years much higher than normal light bulbs. They are actually about 65 Euro cheaper than the conventional ones.

I also understand that some of us don’t fancy the light they produce. I had similar problems at first. Fortunately their development allows us nowadays to get them in all different sizes, shapes and colors. There are even some that you can dim. If you have problems with their light I advice to buy the toned ones or use them in lamps where the bulb is covered.

I guess what I really don’t understand is that there are people in this world that are refusing to change to ‘green energy’ with the argument that they don’t want to spend some additional euros every month (which is by the way not even necessary as you can read in our article about ‘green energy’), but at the same time have a house full of conventional light bulbs.

It’s like taking your car to drive through the whole city because the meat in one supermarket is 50 cent cheaper than in the other one close to your home.

We have to get away from the mentality that others are responsible for the gradual collapse of the environment. Sorry, but I just have to repeat this,

We, the consumers and voters decide where the power goes!

It has been very quiet on this site lately. I was with my thoughts elsewere, i always keep thinking of what else i can do and thereby i create other projects in my head, while leaving the ones i started behind. But, i won’t leave this one behind, not just yet, not before i have something which will be much better then just a blog. And i have something in mind, but i’ll have to learn a lot more before i’ll be able to pull that one off. But, back to this site, and what this site is for.

Since philipp will be writing soon an article about banking and why, what and how, i’ll just keep it very simple (like always) by just providing some links. First an uplifting one about an aircar, had never really heard of that before, but after seeing the little youtube-thingie, i wondered why this isn’t a much bigger story. Maybe it will be, soon.

and then something that makes me angry, i’m sure ‘most’ people will agree with me, but i’m suprised these things actually happen
that’s it for now.

Everybody has seen ‘The inconvenient truth’ or any other environmental documentation, everybody has read articles about global warming and how everything is just getting worse, has seen the picture with the lonely ice bear drifting away from the shore on a melting small piece of ice.

We have seen it and we felt bad, cause it’s frustrating. We think of it for a few hours, maybe a day or two and than we slowly forget about it.

And why not, anyway we can’t really do anything about it and we have to go on with our life, which is hard enough without having to think of whales and rainforest. We are powerless. And come on, if you think of it, I never ate whale meat (not that anybody ever offered it to me), none of my furniture is made form mahagony or any other kind of rainforest tree and the last plain I took to London would have started with or without me.

I know many of us feel that way and I don’t want to exclude myself, but I believe that there are a few things that can contribute to change something.

I am not talking about pulling the plug so that the standby light is not burning all night, turning off the light after you are leaving a room, wearing an extra sweater in the winter so the heating can be a little lower etc etc. These are all good things, no doubt, things we all know cause everybody knows about them.

‘If I would have a lot money, I would do good things’. Knowing that most of us don’t have the big cash flow, I only talk about some little changes that will merely take a little effort but no extra costs.

First, choose green energy.

When I talk about green energy I mean electricity generated by non-polluting means, in other words by wind, sun, water. Naturally, it would be best to support a provider which exclusively sells green energy. Though in my opinion even staying with a mainly ‘grey’ provider while buying the rather small amount of green energy they are selling is pushing the market into the right direction. One might interject that green energy is more expansive and therefore not affordable to someone with a small budget. To that I can only reply that out of my experience in Holland the green energy provided by ‘NUON’, a mainly grey provider was about three euro more a month than regular energy (which to me is still reasonable), while the energy sold by a only green provider called ‘Green Choice’ is even cheaper than the regular energy I have had so far.

So with a little time and a few mouse clicks you can do already a considerable contribution to the right direction. And it’s really only a few mouse clicks. On www.greenchoice.nl you can ask them to check when the contract with your current provider is finished and if this is soon the case arrange everything for the change.

In my opinion stepping over to green energy is not only about being assured that all the energy you are spending is generated in a non-polluting way but also about giving a sign to companies, politics and the market in general that you care about the sources that supply you.

I wrote a post not so long ago, about a company producing solarpanels in a way that they become really cheap. Which is great news of course, because i would love to have some cheap solar energy from a couple of panels on my balcony. Now they are also selling them for the first time!! So i’m looking forward to the possibility on buying some for myself. Wouldn’t that be great?

anyway, there is a very good informative article about it here, which explains it all very nice….

The next site or video is a little bit negative for my taste and opinionated, but maybe it’s also just the truth and it simply hard for me to believe. It is for sure without any doubt a must see, because it explains very clearly what happens and happened with all the things we buy. And people buy a lot these days.

Check it out, i promise, it’s worth it….

I found a website today through one of my favorite weblogs and i just had to share it here with you. Because i found it an very interesting idea. For 35 euro you can have your message written on the Wall in Israel/Palistine.

With this post i don’t want to say anything about the conflict, because i don’t know enough to be able to have an opinion about it. But I do think this is a nice initiative. So if you wanna find out more, you should really check their site.

And for those who read the previous posts about Chavez and Putin and don’t read the newspaper…

• Putin won the elections, and as i read not in a completely decent fashion, guess that’s bad news for our chess champion Kasparov and probably the rest of humanity (maybe i’m being a bit to dramatic here…)
• In Venezuela they voted against the referendum that Chavez proposed, which in this case won’t lead to another lifetime president. At least he won’t get that kind of power like this. But i hope some of the other proposals dealing with sharing the wealth of the country will in the end go through. Because huge corporations have been abusing the natural possibilities of that country alright.