Willemijn receives ‘Sustainable Accolade’

The first Tuesday of September is 'Sustainable Tuesday' in the Netherlands: the day policymakers, founders and activists gather in The Hague to push sustainability forward. Every year, a jury hands a 'Sustainable Accolade' aka 'Duurzaam Lintje' to three people driving that change. This year our co-founder, Willemijn Verloop was among them.

Receiving the accolade is a huge compliment, but for Willemijn, it's most importantly a mandate to keep going. As she put it in her speech: " , ".

She also used her moment on stage to speak directly to the policymakers in the room. Stop treating sustainability as a line item in a budget, she said, and start treating it as security policy. And protect the space where citizens, journalists and entrepreneurs can organize a counterweight, because without it, the rest won't matter.

That's Willemijn in a nutshell, and it's exactly why this recognition fits her so well. ❤️

Congratulations also to this year's other honorees: Tom Middendorp, former Chief of Defence, who has spent the years since turning firsthand experience of climate-driven conflict into advocacy, and Jos Kloppenborg and Jan Korff de Gidts, who spent more than fifty years fighting, and ultimately succeeding, in protecting the Amelisweerd forest.