I noticed something strange on the internet in the last months of 2018: People in comment sections asking for someone to save the world. For someone to solve all the world's problems. And while I understand the sentiment, it also worries me. If we're all going to cry for help, nothing is going to happen except a whole lot of crying for help. We need to take action, which honestly isn't as difficult as it often sounds. In fact, I think it takes just four easy steps to change the world for the better.

I know, I know. There are so many problems. The world is a shit show right now and we can't blame it all on Trump, Brexit or megacorporations. Besides, those are symptoms rather than causes. The real causes of why we're living in such a mess are too many to list, and that's what makes this first step so tricky: Before you know it, you're in over your head and can't see the light anymore. So choose one problem that's close to your heart. One problem, whether that's women's rights, environmental protection, getting people to vote, you name it. For me, that problem is plastic pollution and environmental protection (hence the pictures of nature, because some people don't seem to realize how beautiful nature is). Choose your one problem and tackle it with all you've got.



Now that you've identified the problem, it's time to read up on it. Of course you already know the basics, otherwise you wouldn't be doing something about this particular problem, but there's so much more information out there that will help you save the world! When I first got involved in the whole hating on single-use plastics thing, I knew the situation was bad. I just had no idea exactly how bad it was though. I also had no idea what I could do to change the situation or which charities to follow and support. At the time, I was still working an office job, so I always had a tab open in the background with a Google search for plastic pollution. Whenever work was slow (which was almost all the time), I'd read a new article or website. Within no time, I knew almost all there was to know and had a list of helpful resources and great charities.


Knowledge is power, but power is useless if you don't do anything with it. So get off that couch and start changing the world for real! And no, I'm not talking about sending a tweet or two. Raising awareness is a good thing, but not if it's the only thing you do. You've got to put your money where your mouth is. If you did well in step 2, you'll know exactly what you need to do.
In my case, this step meant cutting out as much single-use plastic as I could. I switched from slimy shower gel to old fashioned soap from Lush. I choose plastic-free alternatives whenever I can. And because I felt that that wasn't enough, I started raising money to donate to charity. My mom helped me out with this. In the Netherlands country we have a bottle deposit scheme: you pay €0,25 on top of the product price for every big plastic bottle you buy and get that money back when you return the empty bottle to the supermarket, so it can be recycled. These bottles often get dumped in parks or around supermarkets. In those cases, my mom and I pick them up and bring them to the supermarket. That way we raised over €150,- in 2018, which we split between 4Ocean, the WWF and the Ocean Cleanup among others. Donating the money was very rewarding, but what made it even better was imagining the sheer amount of plastic we recycled: A mountain of about 600 plastic bottles that would have ended up in nature, landfills or incinerators otherwise.

Even though I'm proud of my family's accomplishments, I'll also be the first to admit that step 3 was the hardest one. It's the most rewarding one too, not just when you're working on it yourself, but also when you see your friends do their thing. Take Nabila from Hot Town Cool Girl for example, who campaigned like crazy for the midterm elections in the US, even though she's too young to vote. Or Kanra from The Lunar Descent, who organized a tree plantation drive in med school; they ended up planting tons of trees! Charlene is doing whatever she can for animals by raising money for several animal charities all year. And while all these things might seem small, all small efforts put together will make a huge difference in the end.



Want to maximize your impact? Spread the word and convince others to join the cause (and yes, this is definitely the perfect moment to send those tweets!). I'm lucky enough to have parents who immediately joined me in raising money and looking for plastic-free alternatives. We might only be three people, but that's still more than one.

Still feeling a little discouraged? I totally get it. It's a big scary world out there and it's difficult to make a change. Sometimes I feel like I should give up, that all my efforts are for nothing, that I'm not changing the world one bit. Whenever I feel that way, I remind myself of a passage from Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illumiated, in which a kid goes through an existential crisis. His dad asks him the question: "If you picked up one grain of sand in the desert and put it down somewhere else, would that desert still be exactly the same as before?" The answer is no, of course. Every change, no matter how small, is a change and can lead to an awesome chain reaction. If I pick up my grain of sand, the desert won't be the same anymore. If all my friends pick theirs up, a sand dune could collapse. If we all do it, we can move the freaking desert. So tackle a problem. Stand up for what you believe in, for what you think is right. Come on guys, we've got a desert to move. We've got a world to change. We've got a planet to save. Let's do this.

I grew up eating meat on an almost daily basis. My dad, as the guy who delivered meat to the stores, often got freebies from butchers he'd become friends with. Eating meat was completely normal and since my dad worked in the industry, I knew exactly what I was eating. Now that I'm more or less an adult, I don't eat as much meat anymore. My dad got a different job over a decade ago and prices have gone up. Besides, sausages make me gag. Going vegetarian or vegan isn't an option for me though: I quickly run low on iron and have trouble concentrating if I go without any meat for 8 days (yes, I once tried). Yet vegan food intrigued me. I wanted to know what it tastes like, what the texture's like, everything. So when my boyfriend suggested we'd go to the Vegan Junk Food Bar while in Amsterdam, I jumped at the chance and said yes!

The Vegan Junk Food Bar actually has three branches in my country's capital. We walked from the Banksy exhibition at Moco to the one at Staringplein 22 - which wasn't the brightest idea. I got extremely annoyed with all the tourists blocking the sidewalks and my boyfriend's picture can now be found under 'hangry' in shady online dictionaries. Luckily, we made it to the Vegan Junk Food Bar without wanting to kill each other. We did doubt about ordering lunch though: this branch is quite small and seemed to have no empty tables left. But if you think I turned around and had lunch somewhere else, you don't know me well enough: this carnivore wanted her vegan meat. And she got it.


We waited in line to order at the register. I had a hard time choosing between the Original VJFB burger and the Chick'n Nuggets, and ended up ordering both - I was unbelievably hungry, you know. I also got a Sprite, which came with a bio-degradable straw. All the cutlery was bio-degradable as well, so I was a happy camper. I was having a great day, and when our food arrived, I somehow even managed to take pictures before digging in. That was no easy feat: the food looked so delicious that it almost physically hurt me to not start eating right away.


Even though my burger was almost screaming my name, I started with the chick'n nuggets. For some reason I thought that if any part of the meal would disappoint, it'd be the nuggets. Spoiler alert: the nuggets did not disappoint. They were the best nuggets I've had in years. Chicken McNuggets have nothing on these things - but to be honest, I think that says more about the quality of nuggets from McDonald's. I don't even think I'll be able to eat those again after having had these vegan ones. They were just so delicious, both with and without the original VJFB sauce, the taste of which I can't describe (this right here is the reason why I'm not a food blogger). My boyfriend still refuses to believe the nuggets were vegan, despite the menu saying '100% plant-based'. That's how good they are.


Next up was the burger, which had plenty of veggies, vegan cheese, VJFB sauce and a vegan patty. Would it be too easy to say that the burger was just as delicious as it looked? And that my shitty smartphone pictures actually don't do it justice? Probably. Let me say this then: I saw blown away by the quality of the vegan meat. I've had a lot of burgers in my life, and many of them weren't even nearly as good as this one. You'd never be able to tell it was a completely plant-based burger if you didn't already know.


I think I don't have to explain that I was very happy when we left the Vegan Junk Food Bar. It feels good to know that your absolutely awesome meal barely put any strain on our planet compared to the non-vegan version. I could definitely see myself eating meals like this one more often - it's just too bad that I don't live all that close to Amsterdam. I guess this marks the start of the search for good vegan junk food in Rotterdam!

At the start of 2018, I had no New Year's Resolutions whatsoever. I had no idea of what I wanted to do this year, what kind of goals I wanted to reach. I just knew that I wanted to make a difference in this world, a change. I just didn't know how.

At some point, I was reminded of the Ecoeuros project. I'd walked past an Ecoeuros machine on my way to college for years and now I walk past one on my way to work every single day. I knew you could throw old cans and small plastic bottles into it and that'd somehow help the ocean. But that's all I knew. Besides, I'm not a big fan of oceans. Everything in it scares me. Except for turtles and sea cucumbers. Those are okay.

Despite my fear of the ocean, I went snorkeling in Cuba early in February of this year. That's when it hit me: my hypothetical children will never get to see the coral reefs I saw if we don't do something, anything for our planet right now. I decided to do just that through Ecoeuros. And what better day to tell you about my Ecoeuros journey than Earth Day? Brace yourselves, because what started as a simple plan to recycle soda cans and small plastic bottles soon became much more than that.

The first thing I did when I came back home from the Caribbean was research on the whole Ecoeuros project. Simply put, it's a sort of bottle deposit scheme. Here in the Netherlands, we have such a scheme for 1-liter bottles and bigger ones, but nothing for smaller bottles and cans. As a result, they are thrown away all the time, often by the side of the road. Especially the plastic bottles are a problem, as they'll end up in the oceans and will most probably never decompose. Ecoeuros makes it possible to have those bottles recycled. In return for your bottle (or can), you get to choose between a coupon that grants you a discount at certain local businesses, or a donation of €0,15. The RET, Rotterdam's public transport operator, donates those 15 cents to Blijdorp, the local zoo, which in turn uses the money to fund a project that fishes plastic waste out of the ocean.

I was immediately excited about this whole thing and couldn't wait to get involved. One of the machines where you can bring your bottles and cans is right on my way to work, so I started looking for stuff to recycle right away. I asked my boyfriend, grandparents and neighbors to stop throwing away their empty cans and bottles. On February 21st I brought the first can to what I now call the 'donation station'. But that was still only the beginning.

Soon after starting my research, I started noticing just how many empty cans and bottles were just thrown away on streets, in parks, and by the side of the road. Sometimes literally less than a yard away from a garbage can. I'm not talking about a can here and a bottle there, but dozens. Literally dozens. So one day I grabbed a bag, started walking and picked up over 20 pieces of litter that could be used for the Ecoeuros project and, indirectly, to clean up that big and scary ocean. That way I felt even better about what I was doing: I wasn't just helping the ocean, but also my direct environment.
Instead of having this stuff lying around, the plastic gets recycled. Ecoeuros works together with several partners to get that all done. One of them is called WasteBoards and these guys use plastic bottle caps from the Ecoeuros machines to make skateboard decks. As someone who recently started skateboarding again, I couldn't love this use of old plastic more!

Every now and then I took a can or bottle with me on my way to work. In the meantime, mostly on the weekends, I went out to pick up recyclable litter. After a week or three, I started to get annoyed with myself for the amount of plastic bags I was wasting on these picking trips. You see, bottles are fine, though sometimes a little sticky. Cans, on the other hand, are the worst. More often than not, I've been treated to a shower of beer, soda or energy drink when someone didn't finish their drink. All of that stuff ended up in my bags, which had to be thrown away after being used once. That seemed counterproductive, using so much plastic to help a project that focuses on keeping the oceans clean, so I made it a rule that I could only use a plastic bag if I'd found it on the picking trip itself or a previous picking trip. A quick walk around town can result in 4 to 5 bags. Still, I wasn't entirely happy using plastic bags. That's when my mom, who'd also started going on picking trips to help me, decided to make me a reusable, washable bag. She crocheted a bag from old cotton that might have been around when my country was under German rule sometime in the previous century. Her nagging daughter was finally happy and the quest for bottles and cans continued. I try not to look like too much of a weirdo, though incidentally, I will do something like walking onto a company's lawn because they don't clean up their litter. That's what you get for trying to dump ice tea cans in a pond.


A few weeks have passed since the reusable bag was made and I could go on zero waste picking trips. I've picked up lots and lots of cans and bottles since then. My parents pick up at least as much as I do and even my granddad has started picking up recyclable litter. Apart from the cans and bottles, I also started picking up other pieces of trash that can easily be recycled, but I think that's a story for another time. For now, I'm just happy I can do this. It gives my life some kind of purpose. My goal is to have collected 1000 bottles and cans for Ecoeuros before the end of this year. Believe me when I say that I will make it, purely based on the number of bottles and cans I find on the streets of my hometown. So I finally found a way to make a difference in this world, but honestly, I can't do it on my own. If you're in the Rotterdam area and bought a can or bottle of soda, please bring it to an Ecoeuros machine once it's empty. You can find them on subway stations Beurs and Eendrachtsplein among others, as well as on Rotterdam Central Station. If you're not anywhere near Rotterdam, please consider just using less plastic bottles and cans, pick plastic-free alternatives whenever possible and maybe, if you're up for it, clean part of your street every now and then. If we all make some small changes, it will add up to a big one. So let's do this thing together and save those scary oceans of ours!