Environment Friendly Amsterdam

"Be careful! Watch out for the bikes!!"

The locals warn the group of us gawking tourists as try to navigate our way through the city of Amsterdam where the Human Resources Conference of PepsiCo International is being held. From 24th to 27th September, the city of Amsterdam sees repeat performances of the above variety. There are 600,000 bikes for 700,000 residents of Amsterdam and 220,000 trees. There are 2500 houseboats that are sprinkled across the 165 canals that are dug in horse shoe form to garland the city.

Parking a car - even that tiny car that you see below - is a prohibitively expensive proposition. So bikes become the mode of transport for everyone. It is environment friendly and has no fuel bills. That goes well with the PepsiCo philosophy of Performance with Purpose that has Environmental sustainability as one of the three planks of our growth. The other two being Human Sustainability and Talent Sustainability.

With environment sustainability an important component of the “performance with purpose” strategy, PepsiCo has decided to replenish whatever it takes from the environment. “We’re going to reduce our water usage and move more rapidly towards the ideal of ‘net zero’ —for every litre of water needed to make our products, we’ll return a litre to the water supply,” says our chief Ms Nooyi. We want to roll back greenhouse gas emissions as the company grows, continue light weighting packaging and recycling while identifying bio-degradable solutions.

Back to Amsterdam. I saw this lady who had her guitar strapped across with her kid sitting at the back and a dog sitting pretty in a basket slung at the front of the bike. Where's the picture of that, you may ask. She was just zipping past and by the time I pulled out my camera she was gone. But here are a few more bike pictures.

Ever since I had seen the movie Silsila - the Yash Chopra classic in 1981, the scene of the tulip fields and windmills has been imprinted in my mind. I always wanted to see those fields. Sad to say, I did not make it to the tulip field but have pictures of glass versions along with the mandatory windmills and clogs (shoes) . So enjoy!