Corporate science-based sustainability targets
World Wildlife Fund and plant-based food and drink producer Alpro published a report on how companies can reduce their environmental footprints. They go beyond general sustainability principles and address more sustainability issues than climate change. Alpro researches how they perform on science-based targets for land, water, nutrients, and biodiversity that respect planetary boundaries, and how
Climate change: trees to the rescue
Bringing nature back into cities, in the form of trees, can help fight global warming. Climate change is the challenge of the century. The last UN Environment Emissions Gap Report warned that, in order to ensure global warming stays below 2°C, efforts should be tripled, and if we want to stay below 1.5°C, they should
Climate discussion lacks sense of urgency
The urgency of effective political action on the energy transition lies close to my heart. We should reduce the use of fossil fuels at the shortest notice possible. I feel that politicians, the media and the general public are almost totally unaware of this urgency. How did I come to this view? Why do I
The long lead times of wind turbines
It may take a long time before wind turbines will actually generate energy, even in a ‘technical landscape’, as our editor Paul Reinshagen called the Dutch province of Flevoland, an area reclaimed from the sea. It will take a long time to align all people involved; politicians, civil servants and electricity companies may have ideas
Insects are in decline, around the world. How worried should we be?
Widely reported studies this year and last led to headlines globally of an ‘insect Armageddon.’ The real story of insects is more nuanced — but probably just as unsettling. This article was originally published on the site of Ensia. When Susan Weller travelled to Ecuador to study tiger moths in the 1980s, she found plenty
Rob Baan (Koppert Cress): vegetables are healthy, but we’re not allowed to claim so
Five years ago, we visited the outstanding horticultural company Koppert Cress in Monster near The Hague in the Netherlands. Then already, general manager Rob Baan told us that horticulture should concentrate on fresh produce for a healthy diet; with ingredients that help overcome diseases like cancer, obesity and diabetes 2. But health claims are supposed
Biocomposites for cars
Every year the European car industry uses around 80,000 tonnes of wood and plant fibres to reinforce composites, instead of synthetic fibres like glass and carbon fibre. Biocomposites have become increasingly popular with car manufacturers because they can reduce vehicle weight, which improves performance and lowers CO2 emissions. They are used in car interiors for
Productive soils as a carbon sink
We know that plants grow faster in CO2-rich environments. Horticulturalists enrich the atmosphere in their greenhouses with CO2 to ensure better productivity. Can we imagine fast growing plants that would capture CO2 from the air, and on a large scale? A carbon sink, as it were? Yes we can, and we can do it in
