Ecolution

Dutch multitalent Wubbe Ockels, physicist, astronaut, pilot and professor can add a new profession to his endless list. Since 16 July, Ockels is the proud captain of the Ecolution, the first boat that realizes sustainability.

The driving force for life on board of the smooth shaped silver boat is simply wind power. Huge propellers drive the generators while the sails catch the endless wind force.  One simple boat trip generates enough energy for 10 days of comfortable living on board! 

GreenGraffiti had a peep at this revolutionary piece of art while visiting Sail Amsterdam. Of course, as many times before, we combined play with a little bit of work and added a little bit of sustainability to the Sail event ourselves.

To lead visitors to the Nuon booth to become Co2 OK, we sprayed environmentally friendly chalk graffiti’s around the area. This is an addition to the reverse graffiti technique we mostly use, since this technique isn’t applicable to every surface.

When the boats sailed their way to the horizon again, including the lovely Ecolution, we sprayed our messages away.

Ecolution, hope to see you, and perhaps a little family, in 5 years!

wink wink, nudge nudge

Sign up and put yourself on the map

New Union for the Development of a Green Economy, ore just nudge in literal terms “a gentle push’’ is the latest Dutch social venture: An initiative to unite al consumers of the Netherlands, and create a sustainable consumers platform via their website. Power of the mass is the rule here.

Let’s connect now and grow our potential influence. The official launch of nudge will be November the 11^th, on the Day of Sustainability

1491 consumers signed up already. So lets join forces at: 

www.nudge.nl!

Protest Art Gets Environmental

Artists are like-minded: Environmental graffiti can be an efficient and eco-friendly way to spread a message. Think of all of the paper saved!

Around the world, from Mexico City to Australia, New York to Scotland, artists have taken their message to the streets to advocate for the environment. They illustrated current environmental concerns; each artist in a different way.

Starting from today you can vote on your favorite art piece on several green websites.

We really like this alternative and friendly form of protest and certainly hope we will see more events like this in the future!

Growing out of our shell

10:10 global

It seems like a hard task to accomplish, reducing your co2 emission by 10%.  But there’s a new approach that makes it fairly easy to do so!

What is it? 
 
It’s an ambitious project, an initiative of 1010 global, to unite every sector of society, people and organisations, to gather behind the plan to cut back our emissions with 10% in 2010.
The idea is simple: When you have a big task to accomplish it’s easier to break this into smaller manageable segments. We don’t say: We will reduce our emission by 80% in 2050, but start at the beginning, set reasonable goals and commit ourselves to fulfil this small task.

What’s on the checklist? 
 
Luckily 1010 has thought about the fact that some of us need a little help on how to cut back our emission. They provide you with a simple checklist with (10) steps such as: Swap plane for train, use your electricity and gas bills to compare your usage of 2009 to that of 2010, rather take showers than baths….
If you can honestly tick off al 10 boxes you can proudly say: If done 10:10!

Doesn’t sound to hard now does it?


How can you sign up?

If we all join up its directly showing politicians that we, the people, are ready to tackle climate change!

You can register at www.1010global.org/uk

City Beautification

Finally. After a long cold winter summer has arrived in the city. People are slowly waking up from a deep hibernate. It seems everyone is relaxing in our city parks, on the beach or on a terrace, enjoying a cold bear ore a lovely rose wine.

The initially leafless trees and flowers are blossoming in the sun, soaking up the light and offering their goods to the little insects. Yes, every season has it’s own advantages but it’s clear that summer brings an extra something to both nature and people. An extra flare so to say.

But unfortunately since civilization hit the world, pavements, asphalt and buildings make it impossible for Mother Nature to spread her treasures everywhere she would like. While al the city parks offer a wide pallet of flowers of the brightest colours, other area’s remain dark and gray, since it’s not possible for a flower to grow on asphalt or concrete.

What a shame we thought. So we decided to bring the beauty of summer to these area’s in another special way.

As reverse graffiti is a technique that can be used in many ways we felt that it was time to start with something that has been running trough our minds for a while know, which we call “City Beautification”.

The advantage of the reverse graffiti technique is that it’s possible to basically create any form or image of any size that you might like. The possibilities are endless.

We teamed up with creative Christine van Doesburgh (Toutine), an animation artiste who had created flowers out of old peaces of wood she found on the street. We have decorated the pavement with a 160 meters (!) long artwork of her designed wild flowers and plants to beautify the neighbourhoods that summer couldn’t reach.

We are all thrilled with the result and are curious about your thoughts, feelings or suggestions about city beautification! 

Orange fever replaces Green fever

There’s no doubt about it: Running a business of your own means hard work and mostly on times when other people enjoy a free day. But today was an exception.

Our little office is (for now but moving to a bigger place soon!) located on one of the busiest streets of Amsterdam, with tons of café’s and bars surrounding our humble office. With the start of the World Cup, it was already getting even more crowded and snugly around here. Flags and lions colour our street brightly orange and the sound of the South African vuvuzela’s makes it hard to stay concentrated.

So we decided to leave our little office alone, just for this afternoon, and mingled ourselves in the orange crowd to support our national team. We putted on our fair trade bracelets of the rainbow collections and cheered for our guys. Many beers followed at café Nol, and luckily the game ended very well for us Dutchies (2-0)! Which was not so good for the only four Danish guys sitting in the bar….

Back at our office, trying to catch up with our work with the sound of the Black Eyed Peas hit song “Tonight’s gonna be a good night” echoing from the boxes from the bars. And yes, we got a feeling, tonight’s gonna be a good night!