living in a large apartment with high ceilings is wonderful for a spacious home and can be a challenge in colder winters and chilly spring and autumn times, especially for a dancer. these days i learned that the city of Rotterdam annually produces ca. 6000 kg of sheep-wool from grazing (instead of lawn mowers) (methane vs. other emissions?) and that this wool for now is either burned or shipped off to China, when it could be used locally, e.g. for isolation of roofs and houses.
artist and researcher Christine Meindertsma was a driving force in a specific project in 2020 how this situation could be improved. her project-counterpart at the Rotterdam municipality, Carolien van Eykelen, stated that as of now the project is finished, it is time for someone with an enterprise (= willing to invest money) to make something out of it. (scroll down to the video on the page, it is very beautifully done, duration 10min.)
while I could find at least one Dutch company offering wollen blankets in the Netherlands, I could not (yet) find out how and where the wool is farmed or processed further into their textiles. the other products that are available locally include products from Sweden, where the sheep wool partly comes from New Zealand, ... or another company, farmed and processed locally in Norway. all three options seem preferable to yet more oil-based synthetic plastic fibres and more microplastic ... finally, I found out that there is a Rotterdam-based company offering ecological thermal isolation. if I buy the booklet at nearly 20 euros, honoring the pioneering work and time that the CEO has done ...
for isolating my apartment as a tenant, I would think of removable pieces that I can attach to the walls, lay down on the ground floor underneath the carpet, or at the very least, install as an isolating curtain at strategically useful places in the apartment for better thermal isolation overall. so far I believe that I definitely have no need for a very high quality of wool. until there is a more mainstream-friendly solution, once again it seems that money, and/or lack of (access to) it produce a bottle-neck situation, that only a sufficient amount of money will be able to change. (of course there are always the second-hand stores ... )
overall this research has got me thinking about cash flow, basic income, and who gets to control this flow of income & ability to buy/exchange goods, and the power given with such ability (let alone the case of reparations for Transatlantic Slavery, colonizations worldwide etc.)
according to earlier statements that I remember via XR Rotterdam, the city alone emits ca. 20% of all greenhouse gases in the Netherlands. the overall development for the entire country seems more a bit more positive (source) 2022 also saw more independent(?) research done in this direction, alas two new coal power plants, built in 2015 and 2016 made the target of reduction of 50% greehouse gases by next year (2025) impossible, which had been a target before ...
whoever profits from fossil-fuels for heating this city, likely has a vested interest in not allowing local wool to be used for isolating people's homes on a larger scale, allowing better saving on ever rising (fossil-fueled) energy prices, for a population that gets to deal with ever rising economic inequality. ( = at times directly related to causes for reparations ... **) any connections of such companies with local politicians, past and present, would also be useful to know.
** before painting too bleak a picture, the city did hand out a one-time support of 500 and 800 euro to people indicating a need, to help save on the worst of spikes, as did the Dutch government for 2021-2022 to help soften the increase)
as a dancer, I work in this urban environment and its consequences, from the soot I keep finding in collectible rainwater from refineries and cruise-ships *** to making a living for producing autonomous dance work on a minimal, but still effective scale of means.
*** as can be seen here, such soot also can easily come from as far as RWE in West Germany documented by Last Gasp / 2-min. info video
while I still claim the right and the social means to keep producing such work, without having to defend (again) whether what I do is "useful" and by which standards (usually against "conservatives" or the latest populist merchants of doubt such as in 2011 ... ) this does not mean that I am not interested in better overall living conditions, which may also help produce more autonomous "unnecessary" dance work ...
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