If everyone in the world lived as we do here in the Netherlands, three worlds would not be enough, according to recent figures from the WWF. Most people will be unsettled by that thought, but above all I can see opportunities for our sustainable agriculture.
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Enterprise and trust are inseparable for me. The confidence of the people around you, the trust of your employees, but also of your suppliers and, of course, especially of your customers. Doing business as I like to do it is nothing without trust.
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Over the past year I have been able, thanks to my title of Businesswoman of the Year 2009, to give many lectures and interviews and to attend symposia. In the beginning they quite often asked me during interviews about “how I had managed things at home, with a family and so on”. This question is, I am afraid, still a model for the level of discussion in the Netherlands about women at the top.
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On the day after my selection as Businesswoman of the Year 2009, I was overwhelmed by questions from the media. After four phone calls I was a little tired of questions about how I organized everything with children and work ‘and so on’. And then an editor from Intermediair phoned me.
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It took a while, but I am in Rome, Italy, on a trade mission for Dutch businesswomen. The logo of the mission is a high heel and “of course there will be time for shopping too”, according to the program.
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March 2010. The WWF publishes its report “Water – a precious commodity”. After being awarded the Cleantech Star, we obviously look at the WWF’s publications with special attention.
In the report, the water footprint is calculated for a variety of everyday products. The report confirms my view on the future: a shortage of energy will not be the world’s greatest problem, but a lack of clean drinking water!
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My passion lies in innovation and sustainability, especially in the field of sustainable food production and supply. I once heard someone say that everything starts with food. Or maybe with water. Water is the basis of food. And food is the basis of knowledge. If you do not have food, you cannot learn.
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The Netherlands can be a lot more sustainable by tomorrow. Do you have an idea how many megawatts of energy and billions of euros we could save if we would start tomorrow with aligning the systems of buildings better on the users’ behavior? That’s about 20 to 30 percent energy savings over 60,000 offices.
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The past weeks I have been able to experience what the surprising results are if you let some creative minds go ahead in a particular building. The atrium of our Priva Campus was turned into a magnificent theater for one week. During four evenings an impressive opera about our family business was performed for a sold out crowd.
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This afternoon I had a meeting with Gerda Verburg, our Minister of Agriculture. It was her first day after her holiday, and was fully planned from 9 o’clock in the morning until 9 o’clock at night: the budget talks were imminent. I thought I would get straight to the point: “That is convenient, because I also have a few wishes from the horticulture sector.”
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