Two weeks ago, I shared all the stuff I bought new and secondhand in 2024. That’s an evaluation of (possible) negative impact. Today I want to look at the other side of the medal when it comes to an eco-positive lifetyle: the positive impact. The base of an eco-positive lifestyle is to live within the earth’s impact. At that point, you live eco-neutral. When that base is there, the trick is to make as much as positive impact as one possibly can, to live eco-positive. I try to do so every year and today I want to evaluate my positive impact in 2024.
Here’s all my positive impact in 2024*:
1 | Donations to charities
I’m starting with the money donations, because I think a person can have the most positive impact by the money they donate. If donated right, you can save a life with just $3.000 dollar. But I don’t donate only to the ‘right’ charities (that means, the top 4 most effective ones), I donate to many things I find important. So I can’t say that I save a life in every so many years at this rate. Right now, I donate to charities to support nature, people and animals. In 2024 I donated about 1.600 euros all together to different 13 charities. I am happy with this amount and I wish to expand this in the coming years.
2 | Plasma donation
In 2024, I moved from Amsterdam to my in-laws in Harderwijk. In Harderwijk, there’s no option to donate plasma, only blood. Since I didn’t expect to live with my in-laws for that long (because I thought my boyfriend and I would find a home in a few months), I did not switch to blood donations, but I just waited. I still live with my in-laws right now and we’re 10 months further, so I didn’t donate plasma anymore in 2024. So in 2024 it comes to only one donation in the beginning of 2024. 500 ml of plasma. Every bit counts of cours, but I am hoping to increase this number next year. But for now, I am happy to have helped with this plasma.
3 | Youtube-channel**
In 2024 I continued making video’s on my Youtube channel. I published 24 video’s and 66 shorts, wow! In 2024, I had 19.073 views! 19 thousand times I had the chance to inspire someone about an eco-positive lifestyle. In 2023 I had about 5.000 views, so I almost quadrupled in views. That is honestly amazing. The amount of subscribers also grew from 107 to 165! The video that was seen the most, a video about sustainable traveling, was seen 440 times. But maybe most important: I still find it a lot of fun to make video’s and to try to inspire others. I am curious what 2025 will bring.
**My Youtube-channel also emits greenhouse gases because it uses up energy. I don’t know how much that is. But I am hoping that the positive impact is outweighing the negative. I might have to look into that one day.
4 | This blog***
My goal for this blog is the same as with my Youtube-channel. I wish to inspire as many people as I can to live an eco-positive lifestyle. In 2024, I had 8,800 views on this blog and 5,600 visitors. That is about 1,300 more views and 1,500 more visitors than in 2023. I find that special, because I decided to lower my rate of published articles in 2024. I lowered the frequency from August onwards, so maybe next year I will go down again, who knows. For now I am very happy. Especially because more than 3,000 views out of those 8,800 came from search engines. That’s something that I’ve been working on the past couple of years and now I can see that it is paying off. I am proud, because that means my content is still found on the long term.
***This blog also emits greenhouse gases because it uses up energy. I don’t know how much that is. But I am hoping that the positive impact is outweighing the negative. My hosting party is Antagonist, the most sustainable one I could find.
5 | Other social media****
Besides this blog and Youtube, I am also active on other social media platforms. Instagram and Tiktok. I will not add up all the views I had on those platforms, because I can’t see it all at once and it’s a big sum. I think it’s a looooot. On Tiktok, my most viewed reel was seen more than 82,000 times. On Instagram, my most seen reel was seen 2,800 times. I have seen my reach grow over the past year, with structurally more views. On Tiktok I have 147 followers, on Instagram 610. I think that’s a loooooot of people! I am very content.
****I still have mixed feelings for Instagram and Tiktok, I’ve written about this love-hate relationship with social media before.
6 | Trash picking
This is the first year I can report a number when it comes to trash-picking! That’s because I decided to measure how many items I picked up. To show other people how much you can do as one person. I started counting in April and counted 122 items of trash in total. The real number is even higher, as I started counting in April and I didn’t manage to document (and therefore count) everything. In 2025 I will start from the beginning, so I guess it will be even more. But 122 is a lot already! I wonder how many bags of trash this fills.
7 | My full-time job
In April I switched to another job. I still work in the energy-transition and that makes me feel like I have positive impact. Right now, I work for the European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), which means that I work to ensure that the industry in the Netherlands cuts their emissions, to eventually zero. I am grateful to be doing this important work and I have to say that it fits me a lot better than my previous job in the energy-transition. I am actually intellectually challenged and that makes me feel that it should be me who’s in this position. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to quantify the amount of impact I made this year in this new job.
8 | Climate Challenge at work
In this new job of mine, I was also asked to host a Climate Challenge. In this challenge, colleagues were asked to measure their impact for a month, using the tool I normally use as well to measure if I lived within the earth’s capacity. I informed these colleagues about the top 10 behavior with which the average Dutch people causes the most negative impact. I think many people learned a lot, as not many people know about hidden impact (but the hidden impact is the biggest negative impact). About 24 colleagues competed in the challenge and tried to cut down their impact. I hope it will have an effect in the long run!
9 | A lecture on sustainable traveling
In May 2024 I gave a lecture about sustainable traveling at a local Energy Cooperative. I was asked to do so by my mother in law, who used to work for the cooperative. I talked about everything I have written on here too about sustainable traveling. About not flying, enjoying the actual travel and seeking beautiful places closer by. I think there were about 30/40 people present that night. It was such a lovely night. People reacted very enthusiastic and kind. I couldn’t sleep due to excitement that night. I hope I planted a seed with some people.
10 | Investments in solar panels
I have been investing in solar panels for a few years now. In 2024 I two new investment worth 1,250 euros in total. I invested 750 euros in a solar project in The Netherlands and 500 euros in a solar project in Rwanda. Right now, I try to invest 50% of my solar investment budget in The Netherlands and 50% in foreign countries. That’s because we still need more solar power in The Netherlands (since much of the economy isn’t electrified yet), but of course also in foreign countries. I guess for now 50/50 is great, but in the future I will invest more in foreign solar projects as The Netherlands will be fulfilled at some point. I am happy to contribute to the energy transition this way and make it go faster.
*There might be more positive impact of course, in the little things. But those are things that can’t be measured. In this post I stick to the things that are measurable or really important to me.
Yours sincerely,
Romee