Album of the Day: heat death of the universe – Dead Butterflies (song recs: ramona’s theme, exploding heart syndrome)

              Today, we started late, around 9 am, to head over to a tulip farm to see the last of the tulips before the last ones are cut. Tulips are essential to the economy of the Netherlands, providing over 40 billion in revenue yearly. The farming practices, at least in the farm that we toured, were very sustainable and allowed for the flowers to stay healthy while minimizing any risk of disease between them. Even the canals in the farm were planned out to automatically adjust and water the flowers naturally. The company even started using machines that can detect disease and deploy small amounts of pesticides to deal with the threat while keeping the whole field healthy. Overall, learning about tulips and the industry around them was a massive highlight of today and anyone who visits should try to go to a tulip field!

              Aside from the tulip fields, our group went to two sustainable developments, one in housing and one in office construction. Schoonschip, the housing development, is a small community of around 40 – 50 houses that float along the river. These houses have been built with sustainable materials by the residents and have been made with the express purpose of being as ecologically friendly as possible. These houses take barely any power from the city, only having a single electrical connection and producing most of their power through solar panels. Lastly, we visited buildings that were designed by EDGE, a sustainable building design company that focuses on office buildings and mixed used development. A lot of their buildings have won awards for integrating sustainable design, like green space and solar panels. They’re the people responsible for the Unilever USA hq. Overall, the second half of the day had a lot of very interesting insights into different ways our buildings can be more sustainable.