‘Awareness of sustainability, we realize more than ever, is actually a luxury'

Did you know that around 8 million pieces of plastic end up in the ocean every day worldwide? That is good for an annual weight of more than 26,000 Boeing 747s! Not only are our oceans an important playing field for us and our customers, the plastic problem affects us all. That is why we launched 'Operation Plastic' for all Thales colleagues at the beginning of this year, in which we pool our strength and knowledge to tackle the global problem of plastic waste. The activities within the Operation Plastic project range from large to small: our engineers support charities that clean up plastic, departments organize team outings at the beach to pick up plastic, and we collect plastic caps at our sites for sustainable processing. And… during the internal online kick-off of our anniversary year in January, colleague Sijtse inspired everyone with an explanation of his personal zero-waste lifestyle – just before he was going to leave on a sustainable round-the-world trip with his wife. By bike! Time for a second interview: how are you doing now?

[This part of the interview took place before the start of Sijtse's journey.] Let's start at the beginning: you talked about your sustainable lifestyle during the opening of our anniversary year. What exactly does that mean?

'It actually stemmed, for my wife and I, from a slowly growing discomfort about how our planet is doing, and how we are interacting with it. There was not one immediate cause, more a kind of growing insight. Slowly but surely, we have changed our habits more and more. We hardly ever go to the supermarket anymore. My wife goes to the market with her own bags, to the bakery with her own bread bags, buys nuts in her own containers, etc. We try to avoid plastic packaging, cause as little waste as possible and eat as much plant-based food as possible. All compliments to my wife, who also makes sure that we continue to get the right nutrients – I didn't eat it myself. She tries everything. Very occasionally I want to complain a bit, when I'm chewing something that tastes very vegetably… Haha.'

Does your view on sustainability also lead to a different way of working?

‘I now work at Thales as a service design architect, but I was previously a Sales Manager for Asia here. That meant spending a lot of time on planes. I enjoyed the work, but I would feel less comfortable with it now – I prefer to fly as little as possible.'*

Speaking of sustainable travel… you are going on a cycling trip around the world! Why this sabbatical?

'While we were increasingly engrossed in responsible food production, we happened to come across a podcast about a Dutch man who had turned his life around. He had quit his job in business and bought 15 hectares of land near Barcelona, with the aim of turning it into an 'agroforestry' farm: regenerating the emaciated land with almond and olive groves into a more responsible form of food production, more biodiversity and CO2 storage. In addition, he helps farmers in the area with workshops and knowledge exchanges about sustainable food production, so that they can move forward together. Crazy, but we immediately thought, we would actually like to visit this place. And we want to help him! What if we go on a sustainable international trip and raise money for such a good cause? That is why we have set up a crowdfunding page. With the money we collect during the trip, we sponsor new plants for the food forest to be created near Barcelona. We will drop by with our check at the end of our journey, when the food forest is being planted.'

[We called Sijtse and his wife Irma for part 2 of this interview after more than a month on the bike. At this point, they had just arrived in Greece from Turkey.] Good to talk to you again! We are of course curious: how is the journey going?

'Well! We have now been on the road for 44 days, have been to 7 countries and have already cycled about 2150 kilometers. We regularly camp outside, take a hotel room here and there, and are also regularly invited to not only eat or drink at people's homes, but also spend the night. The hospitality we experience is enormous! It is a fantastically beautiful, and sometimes very intense experience. Because we don't have a fixed plan, you sometimes have days when you don't know where you will sleep until it's very late. Days when you set up your tent next to a river, or on the field of a local football club, or you have to knock on houses to ask for a good place to sleep in the area. We are now trying to prevent such last-minute plans as much as possible. We feel we're too old for that, haha.'

You are traveling with a sustainable mission in mind. How's that going?

'With mixed results. On the one hand, things are going well: we fill our water bottles as much as possible at local water points, still go out with our own bread and fruit bags, etc. Where you meet people with whom you share a language, you can have nice conversations about wanting a greener future. We have even been in the local and national news in Serbia, thanks in part to our 'travel logo' of the '2zeetjes' [because of last name Van der Zee, ed.] on our bicycles.

However, while traveling, eating plant-based foods and consuming as little plastic as possible is difficult. Which makes sense of course: in small villages in the Balkans you may come across only one supermarket, in which everything is already packaged – you should just be happy that you can find what you are looking for. You have to make do with the local facilities, so we adapt to this. At home you have a routine, you take your bags along to the market and various shops, you know exactly where to go. When you travel, you don't know what the rest of your day will look like in the morning, let alone whether you can find a market going on. You don't always speak each other's language, so you may just be able to point out on a map where you want to go, but not why you are traveling.

Sustainability awareness, we realize more than ever, is actually a luxury. Where there is more poverty and fewer resources than, for example, in the Netherlands, sustainable lifestyles simply do not exist like that. In those circumstances, you have other things on your mind. We fully understand that.

What we do ourselves, our zero-waste principle, is of course a very small drop in the ocean. The further you travel, the more you realize how many people there are on this world, all of whom also produce waste. If you really want to achieve something, you have to do so on a larger scale. Not only personally contributing to a culture change, but also drawing attention to amended legislation and supporting organizations such as Plastic Soup Foundation, Plastic Soup Surfer, Greenpeace. The deposit that we now have on smaller bottles in the Netherlands, for example: with things like that you take bigger steps forward. I think sustainable developments will gain momentum in the coming years, simply because it is necessary to be able to continue to care for the world's population.'

What else would you like to share with our readers?

"There's a book called 'Most People Are Good'. That is also what strikes us during this trip. Hungary, Turkey, Serbia: everyone is so welcoming and nice. Eastern Europeans are not always well known in the Netherlands. As far as we're concerned, this is a wrong cliché that we would like to correct. The great thing about traveling by bike is that you really get to meet people everywhere. You experience local life; that's how you make the best contacts. We document our journey via Instagram/Facebook, Polarsteps and our website(all can be found as 2zeetjes), and we are gaining more and more followers as we travel, including people we met along the way. So on the way to that beautiful charity in Spain, I invite anyone who wants to know more to join us on a digital journey!'

*Want to know more about sustainable travel and Thales? Take a look at Andersreizen.nu! As a partner of this coalition, we exchange lessons about more sustainable travel with other companies and we continue to improve ourselves. For example, we do not fly short distances and we always look for the options with the least emission impact. Join us!