I got inspired by the stubborn Texel farmer with 300 cows and owner of a company on Texel specialised in  moving sand, demolish buildings, paving, mowing and transport. You may remember him from his quotes on the Monday evening when we presented the plan to the locals: "Why would you open the dikes? That’s just crazy! The land is owned by farmers and is in their possession for generations! You can't come here and just do that?!" And after giving a monologue of a whole list of things he did not like and that were not possible, Caroline asked the question: but what do you like about the plan? "I like this evening, talking and discussing with the students" Carolyn: "No, what do you like about the plan? ”Eeeh ... I don't know, I don't like something in specific.." Werner replied.

A very straight forward man you can say who is cautious towards new ideas from de overkand (the mainland) and can appear very stubborn and conservative. But is he? He came to our presentation, while I can imagine he has a full schedule with all his companies. Also he stayed a long time discussing with us and was one of the last people who left. After the presentations I had a long chat with him and discovered some things about him: Werner is very sustainable. 

He has as the amount of solar panels on his roof that produce as much as energy as he consumes. He just replaced the lighting in the workshop with LED lights. He hate to waste stuff and try to reuse as much as possible. The demolishing company he ownes tries to separate the building waste as good as possible and brings it to a very good recycle company in Amsterdam. He also don’t like building and installation companies that throw away (new) building components that they do not use, just out lazyness . He buys new trucks because they have cleaner engines (you can discuss when it is sustainable when to buy a new cleaner truck but which cost energy to produce it, or to use an old truck that polutes more but has a longer life time and less embodied energy per year).

We make nice plans for Texel to be sustainable, but I don’t have solar panels on my roof to make my house energy neutral. I also try to reuse as much as possible but he also makes his company to do so. I realy like his both feed on the ground attitude and living your beliefs. I like that much much more than all the companies that sell themselves as sustainable and green and only use it for the marketing.

To conclude: I got inspired by a sustainable Texeler.