18-12-2009 om 14:00 by Sueli Brodin

Imagine that you’re making rice for dinner and that you suddenly spill all the contents of your measuring cup on the kitchen floor… What do you do?

If you’ve had a Japanese grandmother like me, there’s only one choice. You kneel down… and start picking up all the grains of rice, one by one, even if it takes you half an hour, because you can still hear her gentle voice in your head telling you: “Mottainai…” (“What a waste…” in the sense of “What a pity it would be to waste this perfectly edible rice...”)


My little brother and I with our Japanese grandmother in Tokyo, Japan

I thought of my grandmother again when I read in the news last week that the average Dutch consumer wastes about 50 kg of fruit, vegetables, meat, bread and other food products every year. “If we were to load all the food that we Dutch people waste every year into trucks,” the Dutch Minister for Agriculture Gerda Verburg commented, “we would get a 9000 km long traffic jam, from Amsterdam to almost as far as Cape Town.”

My mother was raised in the spirit of “Mottainai” and so was I. It is one of the Japanese words my children have grown accustomed to hearing me say when they don’t want to finish their plate or when they “accidentally” damage a new toy: “Ah mottainai…”

Interestingly, the concept of “Mottainai” has been gaining worldwide notoriety thanks to the “Mottainai Campaign” launched by the Kenyan environmentalist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maathai, who was so impressed when she heard about it during a visit to Japan in 2005 that she decided to promote the expression in Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States as a common keyword for conserving the environment.


Kenyan environmentalist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maathai

Her campaign website says that the strength of the word “Mottainai” lies in the fact that it captures in one term the "Four Rs" urged by environmentalists worldwide: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Respect.

Wangari Maathai this week again referred to the spirit of “Mottainai” during her speech at COP15 in Denmark and I wouldn’t be surprised if her ideas were soon to spread in the Netherlands as well. They might even find resonance in the Maastricht region, which has made sustainable development one of its strategic priorities and where the “Cradle to Cradle” concept is being supported and adopted by an increasing number of businesses and designers.



In fact, although I do notice examples of unnecessary waste in my everyday life among the Dutch, my overall impression is still that considerable effort is put into the sharing, recycling and reuse of products.

This will perhaps sound strange but one of the most meaningful milestones in my feeling of being settled in the Netherlands was when Dutch friends and neighbours started giving me second-hand but still perfectly flawless and undamaged clothes or toys for my children, or sharing produce from their vegetable gardens with me. I experienced it as a sign that I had been accepted in the community, and I know that my grandmother would have smiled and been happy for me if she had been able to witness these moments.


Our neighbours often give us produce from their vegetable gardens

In my eyes, through these simple and generous gestures, my Dutch friends are also putting the Japanese concept of “Mottainai” into practise.

“Mottainai” is often described as an intrinsic Japanese word, difficult to translate in any other language, but I believe that it has a Dutch equivalent. The Dutch often use the word “zonde” with the same meaning, for example in the expression “Dat is zonde” (“It’s a pity”). The word “zonde” in Dutch however also has a heavy moral connotation since it also means “sin”. This, perhaps, can be linked back to the Dutch Calvinistic precepts of economy and frugality.

What I like about the spirit of “Mottainai” is that it reminds me time and again to be careful not to unnecessarily waste earthly resources, and I also enjoy the aspect of sharing that goes with it.

I experienced it again this week. My daughter Naomi, who is rather small for her age – at least according to Dutch standards, went to play at a friend’s house and when I picked her up, her friend’s mother asked me: “What is Naomi’s size? Can she use an extra coat? Wait a second, I think I have a very nice winter coat for her...”

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