The View from my Window in 1959
The view out of my bedroom windows as a child was entirely commanded by coal mines. There were 13 in the total region and I could see  5 of them directly from my bedroom windows, plus another two across the German Border in the distance. My dad made his living as a financial controller for the Dutch State Mines and felt that living in the heart of the black gold, would be cutting his daily commute to five minutes instead of fifteen. Literally.
Obviously coal was an important industrial and financial engine in the early days after World War II, so no one really complained about pollution in those years of the fifties. Coal mines meant jobs and jobs meant prosperity.¬† And solid “middle class” we were, even though that only works as a comparison. If mom and dad had decided to stick to two children, in which case I wouldn’t have been around, they might have been called ‘wealthy’, but as it was, Catholicism demanded large families and mom bore 5 sons, neatly spaced, yet forever wanting a girl.
Their substantial contribution to the world’s population, while making an income from energy exploration that created large amounts of industrial pollution had absolutely no social consideration in those days. Putting food on the table, a roof over your head, clothes to keep warm in and if something was left in the wallet, give you children a good education, those were the priorities and life was clear cut in its day to day simplicity. With the Second World War as a sore memory, people just wanted to live and procreate.
View from the East
But then in 1967 things rapidly changed in my neck of the woods; the government closed the mines and moved the country’s energy production 200 miles north to the North Sea Natural Gas reserves. Prosperity left from one day to the next and put a lot of people in instant poverty. By 1969 the area was depressed and crime started to grow alarmingly. A total area of about 250 square miles with an easy 1,250 inhabitants per square mile at its maximum Carrying Capacity was looking at a very questionable future.
What saved us was a very intense re-building of infra-structural amenities, guided by a public/private Industry bank. A masterplan was quickly put together based on the Law of Economies and Carrying Capacity. This turned former coal mine complexes into recreational parks, activity centers and tourism attractions. It created industrial parks, educational centers, trade centers, a new international airport and waterways were constructed, high speed rail road systems and a university was planned and constructed with massive medical research and treatment facilities, whole cities, towns and villages were politically and administratively re-constructed within the guidelines of service capacities and unemployment was zero for quite a long time and even today is only 4.8%.
For a decade the entire region was under guided reconstruction and restoration, a mentality that was quickly adopted by a previously depressed population and the regional metamorphosis was mind boggling.
It was in those days that I learned about the Law of Economy.
In its simplest form it means, if you extract something from the earth, make sure you maximize its use beyond the initial reason for extracting.
And frankly the initiatives that re-build the neighborhoods of my youth taught me the important lessons of re-cycling earth extracted materials over and over again. I learned about criteria that define the carrying capacity of a city, a town or even a neighborhood. I learned the logical approach to distance and usability of terrain.
The Coal Mine Mountains – waste materials from the extractions – were quickly turned into impressive landscapes with parks and artificial ski slopes. Yet other areas became sporting facilities such as indoor tennis halls, race circuits, windmill turbine energy facilities and so much more.
Coal Mountains turned into Ski Slopes and Parks
By the time 1980 came around there, a mere decade after closing the coal mines, there was hardly a structure or sign left, that just in recent history the entire area made a living off coal extraction. The typical coal hills had been turned into artificial ski slopes, golf course, horse race tracks, parks, experimental fruit and vegetable gardens and many more useful applications. The whole 250 square mile area became a key player in developing along the lines of Law of Economies and took a European Community pole position in 1992 when The Treaty of Maastricht lead to the formation of the European Union.
I have since become a strong proponent of the Law of Economies. Recycling should not always mean destroying and rebuilding; more thought should be given to repurposing.
Repurposing is the innovative process of adapting a product created for one purpose to fulfill a different function after the first purpose has ceased to exist.
Repurposing is the philosophy that brought my native region back from depression. It’s a mindset that only works on a small scale with quick decision making processes, but when done correctly, the results can be mindboggling.
One of the most representative example of this philosophy is the repurposing of the cargo shipping container. The Dutch cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam feature some of the busiest cargo ports on earth and on a small surface, discarded containers became eye sores and dangerous playgrounds. The repurposing of the cargo container has become mainstream in architecture and multiple use in the Netherlands these days.
In Amsterdam refurbished containers provide perfect and affordable housing for¬† large number of students. Today’s avant garde architects built containers into their fancy plans. Italian Coffee Producer Illy found another exceptional application for a used shipping container.
Re-purposing at its best.
Taking any discarded product to the garbage dump is only a temporary solution.
Finding maximum use for a product or packaging is a win-win. An perfect example of that approach is found on the island of St.Maarten. Empty Heineken beer bottles are collected from around the island, shipped to neighboring St.Kitts where the bottles are washed and cleaned and than re-used for the Caribbean Grapefruit soda called “Ting”. When the bottle cannot be re-cycled any more it goes back to the crusher and smelter.
America is the worst offender against the Law of Economy in a society that created so much abundance that nobody seemed to care about  re-purposing and sees re-cycling as a necessary evil.
A complete overhaul of repurposed thinking could find enormous retrofitting for the thousands of parked Jetliners in the Arizona and New Mexico desert, like the solution they found for this Boeing 747  in Stockholm (check tomorrow). Or cargo containers or train cars or ships or old cars, empty shopping malls, industrial buildings etc. etc. Instead of repurposing, the first modus operandi is to destroy and take the debris to the dump or burn. Next is a complete new structure.
I like downtown historic Fernandina Beach, I like the re-purposing of buildings. I like the little train station being a tourism information office. I like the stringent code requirements that forces people to re-use and re-purpose.
Thinking green requires:
1. respect for nature’s resources
2. best case re-purposing and re-cycling
3. reduction of carbon footprints
Tomorrow a story about re-purposing efforts and successes in different countries.
