Students at the Eindhoven University of Technology have produced a car made entirely out of waste products, including plastic recovered from the ocean. Other waste materials include horse hair, coconut fibres and flax. The Luca, as the car has been dubbed, has two electric motors, a range of 220 kilometres and a top speed of 90 kph. It took 22 students 18 months to build the car which, they said, is a demonstration to the car industry of how to use waste as a resource. The students were surprised some of the plastic which had been in the ocean for years, could still be used. ‘That was a real kick,’ one of the students told broadcaster Nos. The use of plastic bottles in the chairs is also a way of making the recycled material last longer, student Sietze Gelderloos said. ‘The plastic of a disposable bottle can be recycled perhaps 10 times. Use it in 10 cars and it’ll last 100 years.’ Car recycling organisation ARN said the project could be ‘an inspiration for car manufacturers’. Dozens of different sorts of plastics are used to make new cars in Europe, spokesman Martijn Boelhouwer said, and that translates to a million tonnes a year. And while cars are almost completely recycled, not all the material is used to build new cars, he said. The Luca will not be seen on Dutch roads any time soon although the students are planning to have the car tested for road-worthiness. ‘There are a number of things that will have to be tested, such as fire safety and performance in different weather conditions. But we dare to dream and that is why we have taken the first step,’ Gelderloos said. Read more at DutchNews.nl:
The number of stillbirths in the Netherlands has more than halved over the past 20 years, according to a new report from UN children’s organisation Unicef. In 2000, around 1,000 babies were born dead every year, but that has now gone down to around 400, the agency said. The reduction is due to a variety of measures, but has been helped in particular by an increased focus on vulnerable women and the importance of a healthy lifestyle, Unicef said. A stillbirth is defined in the report as a baby born with no signs of life at 28 weeks of pregnancy or more. Unicef says almost two million babies are stillborn every year – or 1 every 16 seconds. The vast majority of stillbirths, 84%, occur in low- and lower-middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa or Southern Asia. First year At the end of last month, national statistics agency CBS said efforts to reduce the number of babies dying in the Netherlands before their first birthday have also had an effect, with the death rate shrinking from 5.1 babies per 1,000 live births to 3.6 over the past 20 years. Last year, 617 of the 170,000 babies born in the Netherlands died before reaching the age of one, compared with around 1,000 at the turn of the century. In three-quarters of baby deaths, the child dies in the first 28 days of life. Read more at DutchNews.nl:
A survey of people who moved to the Netherlands to be with their partners who either lived or were posted here shows seven in 10 gave up their career or business to relocate. And despite claims that the Netherlands has plenty of jobs for international workers, almost seven in 10 said not speaking Dutch was a problem when trying to find a job. ‘Even though the official work in all the tech companies is done in English, the culture within the organisation compels you to learn Dutch or else you will not be interviewed,’ one Indian national said. ‘A completely qualified Java developer will not be considered if they don’t speak Dutch or have English as their native language. I am fluent in English but still I never get called back.’ Struggle In total 960 people took part in the survey which was carried out by the International Community Advisory Panel in early 2020, before coronavirus struck. Many of the respondents too said their difficulties in finding a job had left them depressed and unhappy, and having relationship issues. The research showed respondents were looking for work in a wide variety of fields, with an even split of 12% to 13% focusing on education, IT and technology and management or consulting. One in five of the nationwide respondents were men, who had followed their partners to the Netherlands, but in Amsterdam this percentage was 31%. Full time Part-time work may be popular among the Dutch, and Dutch women in particular, but just over half the respondents said they were looking for a full time job, and two-third said they were prepared to retrain to work in a field where there was more demand. ‘It was incredibly difficult (and humbling) to try and find work in the first three years after moving here. I had assumed I would be able to pick up where I left off in my career in America, but that was not the case,’ one respondent said. ‘I love working. My partner earns enough to provide for us both, but I did not move here to be a stay-at-home partner.’ Asked what advice they would give to new arrivals, many said people should start learning Dutch as soon as possible. Read more at DutchNews.nl:
Many Dutch museum chiefs have said they will cooperate with the recommendation to return statues and other artefacts stolen during the colonial era to their countries of origin. The Dutch Council for Culture said on Tuesday that as many as 100,000 objects, mainly from former colonies of Indonesia and Suriname, should be sent back, if requested. Stijn Schoonderwoerd, director of the National Museum of World Cultures, which includes the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden, the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal and the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, said he hoped the minister would accept the recommendation. Together the museums have some 270,000 objects in their collections. ‘I don’t hide behind the state, but everyone should take responsibility’, Schoonderwoerd told current affairs programme Nieuwsuur. ‘We have here a number of 13th century Singosari statues from Java. They were standing next to a crumbling temple and the Dutch thought, they’re nice, we’ll have those. And now they’re here at the Leiden museum.’ Schoonderwoerd said he is not afraid museum collections will be depleted. ‘The council itself said that they were not given the impression by their contacts in Indonesia that it will be asking us to return hundreds of thousands of objects,’ he said. ‘The number will probably be limited.’ Rijksmuseum The Rijksmuseum has 4,000 objects with a colonial connection and none has ever been the subject of a request for return, mainly because there was no procedure in place for countries to turn to. ‘We are viewing history in a different light and that means we look at the collection in a different light as well. And what we see makes us uneasy,’ said Valika Smeulders, head of the history department at the museum and one of the writers of the report. The return of objects that were not stolen but are of great cultural value is not something everyone agrees with. Leiden University professor Pieter ter Keurs said that particular paragraph in the report is ‘a slippery slope’. Read more at DutchNews.nl: