Welcome to my portfolio website. My name is Lydia Heida. I’m an independent journalist and photographer based in the Netherlands. My work is focused on resource efficiency, recycling, renewable energy and food.

I write on a weekly basis about the most important technological innovations in the Netherlands, Belgium and Europe for the online publication Engineeringnet.be.

In the last fifteen years, I have written a lot about the world’s best hi-tech solutions for environmental problems.

My articles have been published in various international media, such as Professional Engineering Magazine, Yale Environment 360 and Spektrum der Wissenschaft.

Investigated topics include:

  • The worldā€™s first industrial-scale plant to recycle carbon dioxide from flue stack emissions into fuel by using renewable energy.
  • Looming metal scarcity as a threat to sustainable energy.
  • The dismantling and recycling of oil and gas platforms.
  • The first technology worldwide to dye textiles by using supercritical carbon dioxide instead of water.
  • Fraud in the organic vegetables industry.
  • The illegal use of water to grow millions of tons of vegetables in Spain which are destined for Northwest Europe.
  • The development of small scale reactors to turn flare gas into fuel.
  • A new way to recycle aluminium from drink cartons.
  • Air pollution in Beijing.
  • EU investments: it turned out that a sliver of their multi-billion euro budget is spent on recycling projects.

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Online magazine DuurzaamAmsterdam.net

Focus: How to live sustainably in Amsterdam.

Topics covered: How to halve your gas consumption, a guide with all thrift stores in Amsterdam, the pros and cons of dynamic energy pricing, recycled gold and silver turned into jewelry bij Amsterdam-based makers, the ultimate guide to Too Good To Goo and many more.

December 2020 until December 2022.

Recycling of carbon dioxide

In 2011, I started to explore which technologies were being developed to recycle the most notorious waste material of our time: carbon dioxide.

It led to the discovery of an unknown Icelandic company that was building the worldā€™s first industrial-scale plant to recycle carbon dioxide from flue stack emissions into fuel by using renewable energy.

This research is still ongoing. Currently, many innovations to recycle carbon dioxide are moving out of the lab and are being scaled up.

For example, Dutch company DyeCoo has developed the first technology worldwide to dye textiles by using supercritical carbon dioxide instead of water. This eliminates the discharge of chemically polluted waste water.

More than 50 media, such as Zeit Online, Wall Street Journal and GreenBiz, linked to or reviewed my story about DyeCoo, which was written for Yale Environment 360.

Read these articles here:

EU’s investments in the recycling sector

From April 2015 to September 2017, I wrote a monthly column about Europeā€™s waste and recycling sectors for Recycling & Waste World (UK).

I discovered, among others, that the EU is spending only a sliver of their multi-billion euro budget on recycling projects. This stands in sharp contrast to ambitious plans of creating a circular economy in the EU, which requires much more funding.

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English and Dutch

My articles are written in English and Dutch. They have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Polish and Japanese.

Media assignments worldwide

Iā€™m available for media assignments worldwide. Feel free to contact me, if you are interested in working together.

Publications in: