Klara Bergman

We're finally here! On Texel! I remember when I applied for this course in early September, and read that the course included a field trip of one week. I was so happy to take a course where we were doing something else than listening to lectures in collegezaal F in the civil engineering faculty for eight weeks to then write an exam. I love the idea of working with a project and actually going to…

Antoine Maartens from Urgenda Urgenda is a foundation that has been founded in 2007. The mission is to improve and stimulate sustainable development. Antoine is the program manager for sustainable Wadden Islands. The interview was conducted in a semi-structured way. We had prepared some topics which we wanted to know Antoine’s on. This report is therefore not an exact transcript but more an…

In this week’s weekly report we reflect on the insights we gained from interviewing Antoine Maartens from Urgenda. Urgenda is a foundation that has been founded in 2007. The mission is to improve and stimulate sustainable development. Antoine is the program manager for sustainable Wadden Islands. The interview was conducted in a semi-structured way. We had prepared some topics which we wanted to…

The title above is something Rush Limbaugh said during his radio show “The Rush Limbaugh Show”  in the US. Paraphrasing, he said that since we humans exhale CO 2  it can't possibly be poisonous or bad for us. Now, I don’t know anything about Rush Limbaugh. He’s probably clever and friendly. However, claiming that CO 2 can’t be bad or poisonous since we exhale is kind of a silly statement.

My phone is getting old. I’ve had it for exactly two and a half years and it is already considered old . Maybe even stone age to some people. Sometimes the alarm function won’t work (getting to school on time every day is a blessing) and the touch-function just crashes sometimes. Now, why is this? Is it made to break down after a certain amount of time? Obviously I’m not a technology-crazed…

The most important technology in the socio-technical subsystem of sustainable mobility, is the ferry connection between Texel and the mainland. This connection is the life-line of the island. The island benefits greatly from the influx of tourists (see figure 2.2.1), and the vast majority of these tourists come by ferry. Moreover, all the services and goods Texel needs to import come by ferry

“[…] every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Someone I knew once showed me Carl Sagan speaking about the Pale Blue Dot . I can’t remember the context or why he showed it to me, but I remember that the movie made me feel so calm. So accepting. Whatever nonsensical problems I was going over in my head, or whatever I thought was…

This week was all about brainstorming on the sustainable future of Texel. In order to design the sustainable mobility future of Texel we have decided to first discuss this solution on the socio-technical regimes level, and later try to zoom in on some technology niches. The first part will be a more ambiguous or intangible approach to the possible solution, while the second provides some tangible…

Introduction The third meeting for the this course, Engineering for Sustainable Development, took place on the 25th of November in Delft and Rotterdam. The theme for this week was “Transitions made by people”. The meeting had the following outline: 13.45-14.45 Lecture by Gertjan de Werk 14.50-15.30 Bike tour to Rotterdam 15.30-17.00 Lecture by Iris Dijkstra 17.00-18.45 Tour of lighting in…

In this weekly report we will shortly explain the organization of our team. Our team consists of 4 people, Stefan Olsthoorn, Klara Bergman, Niki Nicolaou and Derek van den Berg. With different backgrounds and different personalities in the group it promises to be an interest period and collaboration. A proper organization is key and that is why our group from the first meeting came up with a plan…

A couple of days ago a friend shared an article on facebook that caught my eye. The article is written by a girl in NYC who lives a so-called “zero-waste life”. She produces no trash. This is a picture of her trash bin . Pretty unbelievable. The girl, Lauren Singer, started living this way a couple of years ago when she was an Environmental Studies major in college. She felt that she was a…

Listening to the lecture by Roel van Raak about waste management this week, I started to think about my own experiences of waste management. Growing up in a small town in northern Sweden, I was taught to sort my waste. In our house we hade a compost and our plastic, paper, cardboard, metal and glass waste were put in different containers at the local recycle plant every weekend. The most fun…

After watching the documentary “Mission blue” just minutes after I had sushi for dinner one day, I really had to start questioning my choices. The documentary follows Sylvia Earle through her life as a marine biologist, exploring our vast oceans. The change she has seen in the quality of the oceans just under her lifetime is scary. Coral reefs are dying, waste is collecting, oil spills are more…