Bioplastics: end the confusion

The term bioplastics causes much confusion and will continue to do so, according to my conviction. The public does not seem to grasp the difference between bio as in biobased and bio as in biodegradable. As the plastic soup problem … Read more

CRISPR-Cas: a prize winning technology?

According to Piet Borst, a highly respected Dutch cancer researcher, those deserving to receive the Nobel Prize for the development of CRISPR-Cas technology, will not get it. With that he means the microbiologists who did the painstaking fundamental research and … Read more

Brexit was not about the EU

Imprisonment is the worst criminal punishment available to a European citizen. The long-term loss of freedom is loathsome for human beings, and the incarcerated almost always long for freedom. That is why stories involving prisons so often involve prison breaks, … Read more

In memory of Wiero Beek

When in the seventies the discussion on the environmental problem erupted, Wiero Beek, then research director at Unilever, was one of the first industrialists who took the problem seriously. He devoted all his intellectual capacities to that task. Admirably so: … Read more

Global Divestment Day

Today and tomorrow is Global Divestment Day, the day when concerned citizens around the world ask institutional investors like universities and pension funds to withdraw their investments from fossil fuel companies. Because, as gofossilfree.org puts it, ‘as governments fail to … Read more

One bioeconomy, two worlds

Dorette Corbey

At first sight, the discussion was quite adequate at the meeting ‘A sustainable bioeconomy in 2030: are we on the right track?’. Organised by the Dutch Commission on Biomass Sustainability Issues, usually called Corbey commission after its chairwoman. But beneath … Read more

Roel’s team

Roel Bol

Roel Bol Sorry, we publish this review of the Biobased Economy team of the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs, headed by Roel Bol, in Dutch only.

Towards an ambitious Europe

In my increasingly eurosceptical home country, The Netherlands, intellectuals take a renewed interest in Europe. The squarely pro-European essay by the Austrian author and essayist Robert Menasse has been translated into Dutch. And the major study of the Belgian researcher … Read more

The biobased society, a better world?

Will the advent of the biobased society lead to a better world? One the face of it, one would affirm this idea: back to nature, or something like that. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Physiocrats, but at a higher technological level; … Read more

True Price: Roefie Hueting was right

It strikes me that so many aging, i.e. retired people, attend sustainability conferences. Youngsters are present but mainly on behalf of their employers. Elderly people have been engaged in other sectors and now concentrate on sustainability issues. Quite enthusiastically. And … Read more