In today’s world, many of us are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental and social challenges we face. From climate change to economic inequality, these problems are often linked to the way our current economic system operates. But what if there was a different way to think about our economy? Enter the concept of a regenerative economy.
Understanding the Capitalist System
Before diving into what a regenerative economy is, let’s first take a quick look at our current capitalist system. Capitalism is an economic model that focuses on private ownership and the goal of making profits. While it has driven innovation and economic growth, it also has significant downsides.
1. Environmental Degradation: Capitalism often prioritizes short-term gains over long-term sustainability. This leads to over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution, and climate change.
2. Social Inequality: The capitalist system can widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Wealth tends to concentrate in the hands of a few, leaving many people without access to essential services like healthcare and education.
What is a Regenerative Economy?
A regenerative economy, on the other hand, is an economic system designed to restore and regenerate natural and social systems rather than deplete them. It’s about creating a balanced, sustainable world where both people and the planet can thrive.
Key Principles of a Regenerative Economy:
1. Circularity: Unlike the linear “take-make-waste” model of capitalism, a regenerative economy emphasizes circular processes. This means designing products and systems that can be reused, repaired, and recycled, minimizing waste and environmental impact.
2. Local: Supporting local economies and communities is a cornerstone of a regenerative economy. This approach reduces the environmental footprint of transportation and promotes local job creation and resilience.
3. Equity: A regenerative economy aims to create fair and inclusive opportunities for all. It seeks to reduce inequality by ensuring that resources and benefits are shared more evenly across society.
4. Holistic Thinking: This involves considering the interconnectedness of economic, social, and environmental systems. Decisions are made with an understanding of their long-term impacts on both people and the planet.
Why Do We Need a Regenerative Economy?
The damage caused by our current capitalist system is becoming increasingly evident. The climate crisis, widespread pollution, and growing inequality are just a few of the pressing issues. A regenerative economy offers a pathway to address these challenges by shifting our focus from short-term profits to long-term well-being.
Examples of Regenerative Practices:
1. Regenerative Agriculture: This farming method enhances soil health, increases biodiversity, and sequesters carbon, making it more sustainable than industrial agriculture.
2. Renewable Energy: Investing in wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources reduces our dependence on fossil fuels and decreases greenhouse gas emissions.
3. Social Enterprises: Businesses that prioritize social and environmental goals alongside profit are leading the way in demonstrating how the regenerative economy can work in practice.
The concept of a regenerative economy is about more than just changing our economic practices; it’s about rethinking our values and how we interact with the world around us. By moving towards a regenerative economy, we can create a more sustainable and equitable future for everyone. It’s a big shift, but it’s one that’s increasingly necessary if we want to preserve our planet and improve the quality of life for all its inhabitants.
In short, a regenerative economy offers hope and a practical framework for addressing the shortcomings of our current system and building a better future. It’s an idea whose time has come.
If you are curious to learn more about what we find valuable, you came to the right place. We’ve done extensive research what makes people tick, the result you can find on our Happonomy value canvas.
string(3) "yes" NULLHow many times have you heard them?
Two words.
“Happy New Year.”
Probably people have wished you a long, healthy life as well. Happy and healthy. I have to confess, every time I thought, healthy, fine, but there are so many other things that are important to me. That’s what I think when you’ve been working on our value canvas for a year, quality of life suddenly becomes much more than health, and yes I can testify, you come a bit of a ‘quality of life nerd’ as well 🙂
I don’t know about you, but to me Christmas and New Year’s is the time to take a look in the rear-view mirror. Before we look ahead, I want to take a quick look back gratefully on 2019, the year of build up.
With a dozen meetings – lunches, cakes or drinks – in 4 cities, Leuven, Antwerp, Ghent and a first one in Mechelen, we took our first steps in building our community, with several international connections already forged as well.
At these meet-ups I met all positive people who want to build a more value driven society and economy together, people who also give their own quality of life a boost. If there is one New Year’s message I’d like to share in these times of fake news, rising work pressure and climate change, there is a lot of hope and energy to put sustainable transformation further on track.
On our side, of course, we kept going. Our ‘Pension Plan’ workshop, which shows you how money influences your behaviour, was completed and already reached a few hundred people. The speakers from our network of speakers – active at 10 events – undoubtedly more. The first freelancers were guided in their search for a better quality of life and our Federation, a group of value driven freelancers, started the guidance process for value driven entrepreneurs. Together with 3 other partners we started LoReCo, an ambitious 3-year project where we want to install a complementary city currency in a Flemish city, built on a new money design.
Of course, not everything went smoothly. The development of Slingshot, the company model on which we were working, was delayed because we ran into a few legal – mainly tax – challenges. The board game didn’t get any further because of unforeseen issues with the financing of the prototype. We will leave both obstacles behind us in 2020.
2020 will be the year where we finalize some products and solutions, the Slingshot corporate model, the board game and Tribeforce, the software that supports building sustainable organizations.
We will also roll out our existing activities more structurally in Flanders, if all goes well we will be active in 5 cities at the end of this year with an antenna in each city, the first partnerships have been concluded in the meantime. Finally, we will furtherbuild up the foundations for our international presence For example, our site will be translated into 7 languages and we are actively looking for value-driven talent to further develop the Federation internationally.
As you can see, a challenging menu, we are looking forward to it! We hope your year will also be full of plans bringing you enthusiasm, joy and meaning.
On behalf of everyone in our organisation, a happy 2020.
Bruno
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In spite of the rise of vegetarianism, we still consume about 500 million tons of meat each year. Large quantities of natural resources are needed for meat production, and these resources deplete our planet. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only problem facing us. Because of the continuing population growth, increasingly more meat will have to be produced. How can we increase meat production without causing too much damage to our planet and our live stock?
Several companies (such as Modern Meadow) and scientists specialise in transforming human and animal stem cells into tissue. This technique allows them to grow synthetic meat, often referred to as cultured meat, separate from actual animals. Stem cells from living animals are placed in a growth medium of amino acids, fats and sugars, in which they naturally multiply and transform into muscle tissue.
High resource costs and environmental degradation
Producing meat requires plenty of natural resources. It involves live animals who require specific food. This food needs to grow, and therefore, needs water. To harvest the food, machines are needed. To turn the food into animal feed, resources are needed. To transport animal feed, fuel is needed. Live stock requires outdoor or indoor living spaces. If animals are kept in a barn, then that barn will need electricity. When animals are ready for slaughtering, they need to be transported, which again requires fuel. Electricity is used during the slaughter procedures, and the transport of meat to shops and wholesalers leads to even more fuel consumption. On top of that, livestock such as cows produce high amounts of methane and other greenhouse gases. These gases contribute to global warming and all of its negative effects.
It is obvious that the production of meat requires a significant share of our limited resources.
Nature
Cultured meat reduces the amount of water and land needed by 95%. If fewer animals are needed for meat production, we can give more land back to nature. Besides that, cultured meat needs far less hormones and antibiotics, which means fewer negative effects on our health.
Growing demand
The demand for meat is growing, despite the trend of vegetarianism. This is partly because of the increasing world population. It is expected that a lot more meat will be needed in the future, particularly in countries such as Russia, China and India. Increased mass production will lead to an increased strain on resources and, quite likely, a deterioration in animal welfare as well.
Animal welfare
On the other hand, cultured meat will improve animal welfare. Fewer animals will need to be killed for their meat, so there will be no more need for mass production and, as a result, animals will have a higher quality of life.
Tailor made
Tailor made meat isn’t something that will be available right away, but in the future, it could be possible to have a variety of meat types for different types of consumers. For instance, certain vitamins could be added that are not naturally present in regular meat.
Status
A hamburger made from cultured meat has already passed the taste test in London. Steak chips, made from cow muscles, have been tested as well, with good results. It will take a while before you’ll find them in the supermarket though, due to the laws that will have to be approved first.
Usually this process takes about eighteen months. During this time, the producers will have the opportunity to prove that their product is safe and healthy.
Because an ever-growing number of companies are starting to see the potential of cultured meat, the amount of research being done is increasing. This can help bring cultured meat to the market faster than was expected initially. Based on current predictions, it could be as early as 2021, with some companies even aiming for 2020.
Organisations
Currently, there are companies worldwide researching cultured meat. One Dutch company doing just that is Mosa Meat. Its owner launched his first cultured burger in 2013. Although the burger was a bit dry, Mosa Meat is trying to create juicier meat now, and on a large scale. It will be sold as a luxury product initially, at sixty euros per kilo. Right now, they are growing the meat in the foetus of a slaughtered cow, but if the company wants to turn this into a success, they’ll have to create a better solution. After all, the principle is to produce meat without the need to slaughter any animals.
The dilemma that the cultured meat industry is facing, is that consumers obviously want to know what they are eating, while the producers want to keep their recipes out of their competitors’ hands. American NGO New Harvest is financing five universities to research the options for a wider offer of cultured meat, including turkey and lobster. In the US, Finless Foods and Blue Nalu mainly research cultured fish, which is a cheaper process because fish cells require a lower temperature and therefore less electricity.
At the time of writing, it is difficult to predict the long-term effects of cultured meat, simply because it is not yet being produced and consumed in large amounts. Current research shows that it is still too early to determine if cultured meat is the ideal solution for the environment. In many cases, the required electricity will still be generated through fossil fuels. On top of that, more water will be needed than was initially expected. Cultured meat doesn’t have an immune system, so it will have to be sterilised, requiring large quantities of water.
Not all animal ingredients and animal products can be replaced by cultured meat, such as ingredients in cosmetics and pharmaceutical products, and other useful commodities such as leather. These products are much more difficult to replace than actual meat. We still need to do a lot more research if we wish to replace all animal products completely.
Want to find out in what way food impacts our quality of life? We got you covered! Find out more about food and surviving.
string(3) "yes" NULLPlastic has had a bad reputation in the ecological society for years. This is mainly because it takes hundreds of years to decompose and it is considered to be a huge pollutant in our dying world. The only other supposed pollutants that have a worse reputation than plastic are greenhouse emissions. So, how can a villain become a hero? The answer can only be by taking out a larger villain and preventing a huge disaster.
Carbon negative plastic is produced from greenhouse gases. Essentially, the process involves capturing and degrading methane with a biocatalyst. If this was truly as simple as it sounds, then everybody would be doing it; it is actually a complicated procedure that requires very sophisticated equipment.
After the biocatalyst does its job, what you get are basic components such as carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Once you have these three, you are on the easy street to producing plastic and so much more.
Methane atom before being split into carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.
Basically, carbon negative plastic is taking pollution out of the air and putting it to good use. Plastic is virtually indestructible in today’s world, so the least it can do is relieve the world of another pollutant. Greenhouse gases threaten us every day and are the main factors that contribute to global warming. Saving the world by producing carbon negative plastic is a crazy idea that just might work, as it is also an idea that generates profit.
Carbon negative plastic is not a new idea. It has existed for a decade and it has evolved substantially over the years. The greatest challenge was to produce plastic in a cost effective way. It took researchers at Newlight Technologies as much as ten years to be able to produce plastic at competitive prices.
Now, they have a shot at getting a huge chunk out of a $370 billion industry. That is how much plastic is worth these days and the race is on. Securing competitive prices without governmental help is a huge step and if governments decide to support this eco-friendly production method, carbon negative plastic may even come at a lower price than the competition.
Regardless of how things play out, there always has to be a losing side. In this case, the losing side will probably be the big oil and fracking companies and any others that provide fossil fuels for the creation of plastic. Considering that all of them are part of the environmental problem, experiencing a loss from the solution provided seems fair. However, when there is a lot of money at stake, nobody expects huge companies to go down without a fight.
Companies that stand to lose are the big oil and fracking companies and those that deal with fossil fuels.
Carbon negative plastic does not have to rely solely on its low price to compete on the market. This new innovative plastic can also compete with its quality. Newlight’s AirCarbon (which is a high-performance thermoplastic) is already being used to create many different hard-plastic products. Nothing is put to waste as even the resin is used to create plastic pellets, which are just as good as those that are oil-based, yet more cost effective.
So far, what has been achieved is simply amazing. We have finally created something that is not only cost-effective but also good for the environment. The production of this type of plastic can even make the air in large industrial cities breathable again. However, the road ahead is long and filled with many challenges. Currently, carbon negative plastic is produced in a small factory run by a total of fourteen people. Even though there have already been large investments in this technology, its application needs to grow far more before we can see a positive impact on the environment.
Want to find out in what way sustaining our environment impacts our quality of life? We got you covered! Find out more about sustainability and letting go.
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