ON GROWING & GOING ‘BEYOND SUSTAINABLE’

Hey there, I am Chris, a Dutch guy that loves to GROW, inside and out. This includes growing plants and trees, but maybe even more so: growing as a human being. At the end of the day I’m interested in growing positive impact, and where better to start than with ourselves?

In the bigger picture, you’ll probably notice that most of my work is related to ‘sustainability’. That said, that very word (“sustainability“) kind of  bugs me: first of all, what does it even mean? Like, really!? And second of all, why ‘sustain’ something that is actually not working in the first place? Wouldn’t it make more sense to try and find solutions that do a bit more than that? To actually try and fix some of the stuff we’ve been screwing up for so long? Hence my interest in finding solutions that go beyond sustainable.

To get an idea of what that means, think of strategies we can use to minimize or even completely eliminate waste. Think of it, nothing in Nature goes to waste: at the end of its cycle eventually everything is somehow fed back into the system, serving as input for something else. Imagine what would happen if we would apply the same principle to all other aspects of our lives!

Maybe even more interesting is working towards systems that regenerate. We have the knowledge and tools right now to rebuild and regenerate anything from soils to entire ecosystems: regenerative agriculture, permaculture design, holistic management, cradle-to-cradle; they’re are all strategies that can help us go beyond sustainable.

If you’ve never heard about some of these things, no worries, you’re surely not the only one! That said, you’re in for a treat because some of these strategies offer us exciting tools to design and create thriving, abundant living environments (and lifestyles) that go WAY beyond sustainable.

So all that (and plenty more!) is what inspires me in my efforts to grow positive impact in the world around me. I hope by sharing my experiences I will inspire some of you to start embarking on this journey as well: you’ll see that the biggest step is to get started. Once you do so all the other stuff will just start to fall into place!

Keep Growing y’all!

Chris