Unlike Day Four, Day Five began at a reasonable 6:30 AM with a delicious hotel breakfast. I mistakenly thought that the bus was departing at 7:30 AM, and therefore arrived at the hotel lobby an hour early. Once boarding the bus, the class took a collective 1-hour nap on the way to visit the Nouryon center in Deventer, to the southeast of Amsterdam. After an in-depth presentation on the company and a fascinating tour of different chemical labs, we re-boarded the bus for the return trip to Amsterdam. We were given about 45 minutes to freshen up at the hotel, before, for the first time, we took a city bus to reach an Alumni networking event at restaurant Pacific in Westerpark. A group of us decided to explore a nearby festival after wrapping up at the networking event, after which I went back to the hotel to do laundry.
One observation that I made about sustainability here in the Netherlands was that the level of commitment businesses had were much higher than what I initially expected. While we did research on the sustainability initiatives of Dutch companies during our pre-departure meetings, what I was not expecting was how fundamental it was to the business strategies of many companies operating here. For example, Nouryon had an entire section of the presentation dedicated to their sustainability strategy and efforts. They gave extremely detailed breakdowns of what they were doing to be sustainable, how they were approaching sustainability, and their future goals. One slide even included what percentage of power each facility consumed was from a renewable/green energy source. While talking to some of the Pitt alumni, I also found out that Nouryon was not the only company with clear sustainability efforts. Brett from ASML, whom I met at the networking event, explained that even semiconductor manufacturing companies were working hard to decrease carbon emissions during manufacture and especially transport of sensitive goods.
While touring the Nouryon chemical facility, one aspect of the chemical labs I found fascinating was one that most others found to be “boring”: the laundry and dishwasher laboratory. While I am by no means an engineering student, I found that the research being done to find the perfect mixture for cleaning dishes and clothes to be quite interesting. A particularly interesting example was one where shining a special light under “clean” cups revealed that there were many stains left on the cup that was completely naked to the human eye. Our host was fantastic and explained the painstaking process of filtering the water, then adding certain elements back into the mixture all to maintain consistency when testing with two rows of dishwashers. For the laundry demonstration, our lab host allowed us to inspect the different fabrics that had been made dirty in the laboratory for testing purposes.
This day was another enjoyable one, and while quite short, still left me extremely tired and ready to go to sleep. I’m really happy with the way the networking event turned out, and I believe that I made some valuable connections for the future. I am looking forward to visiting the Rijksmuseum and Anne Frank House tomorrow on Day Six.