getting centimental.
what’s in it for you?
Discover the asset.earth origin storyFind out what we have coming up for youBecome an active part of our future7-9 minute read
our first chapter.
It was during the evening rush hour in a busy metro station of Tokyo. I just made it to the platform, commuters everywhere around me. Six minutes until the next train arrives. The perfect time frame for a brief news article or story... After a long day, I was seeking a mental break and inspiration. Scrolling through my Google discovery feed, I found an article on "Degrowth" - sounds interesting.
With each swipe, I delved deeper into the article. Yet, as I read on, the article's political bias and one-dimensional perspective became increasingly evident. My motivation to continue reading waned with the train’s arrival. I couldn't help but feel a little dissatisfied with the direction the article had taken and how such an important topic was oversimplified and exploited as mere ammunition for partisan opinions. I had hoped for a more balanced and open-minded exploration, one that would rise above vested interests and ideology. An article that would make me aware of dominant narratives while also empowering me to discover underserved voices so far drowned out by noisy status quo. My instincts told me that there must be other people feeling the same. Taking these thoughts as inspiration, a vision began to crystallize —
A place for curious minds, united in their belief that our earth is valuable.
A space where environmental and sustainability content would be both accessible and engaging.
And a platform where a multitude of perspectives could co-exist and constructive ideas for our shared, greener future could flourish.
However, moving from the initial vision to reality and forging asset.earth turned out to be an enormous task. Shortly after dreaming up the ambitious project and taking the first steps, I realised that both output quality and quantity would suffer due to my own limited knowledge and time. Luckily, I had just met two very inspiring fellow students with similar interests and a shared passion for nature...
Hastily drawn up on a large piece of paper the evening before, I pitched my vision of asset.earth to Sascha over a beer and vegan karaage (think Japanese fried chicken but with tofu). To cut a long story short, the second Nakama (仲間) or team member was found and the third one amusingly followed right after.
“Sorry Andrew, do you have a few minutes for a brief question? Since you are a nature photographer and have a background in graphic design…so there's this project I am working on…” The originally proposed, short conversation after a shared Japanese class ultimately turned into a full hour of discussion and sparked curiosity on both sides. A few days later the three of us met in a delicious Indian place to explore how we could take the project forward. With Andrew now onboard as well, things accelerated rapidly. Across several productive lunch and coffee sessions, little trips to neighbouring Yokohama and beautiful Mount Takao, we refined our baseline idea, cleared up our path forward and developed the website you are enjoying right now. Meanwhile we also composed our first articles…”Figure 1” doesn't lie - we had a lot of fun in the process and in May 2023, we posted our first article!
Now, 6 months later, we have published a total of 9 articles with topics ranging from climate change over green space value to eco-logos. And there is more to come. Speaking of our articles - hey Sascha why is there a loudspeaker symbol on your article?
Fig 1. The crew is hard at work, meeting all over Tokyo.
our next chapter.
I am glad you asked Michael! Many of you have reached out to us with amazing feedback on our articles, to which, first of all: thank you so much for reading and engaging with us, we really appreciate it! And secondly: your reactions make us even more proud and happier about this first chapter of asset.earth!
We are truly excited to continue this journey with you (as you can hopefully tell by the amount of exclamation marks in this article!) and have a lot of ideas for our next! We will continue to keep you posted on those plans but here are some teasers for what we are thinking about:
Extending the depth and breadth of our topics by adding experts of specific areas to our writers’ board
Building an engaging and meaningful structure around our increasing article library to keep growing healthy branches of interest
Creating tangible real-life and real-time impact together with you
Fig 2. Our 9 first articles, but what is that speaker doing?
However, there is one thing that we kept hearing from you that we wanted to immediately address: reading is great and all, but it is only one way of consuming words. Brewing up your coffee, packing your bag in the morning, riding home on a packed train; all less than ideal situations to be reading on your phone, tablet, or computer. Hence the loudspeaker: to make our articles more accessible, not only for the aforementioned moments, but also for people with visual limitations, we want to create audio versions for all of our prior and upcoming work.
As you are reading this, the first article on the 1.5°C climate target is already available for you to listen to right over here! We will continue to record our prior publications to bring asset.earth articles to you on the audio device of your liking! Given how excited (!) we are about this new format and how new it is to all of us, we would obviously love to hear your thoughts on it – Andrew, what’s the best way for asset.earthlings to give us their feedback?
your two cents.
Well Sascha, I am glad you asked, because otherwise this transition would have been much harder. From the beginning, asset.earth was not a product, but a platform, and a place where we wanted to share information on various topics at the intersection of economics and the environment. But it is too easy to get trapped in your own echo chamber, so we wanted to create an open space where people could ask, question, challenge, and learn alongside us. We are always learning, and so asset.earth’s idealised form is really an information exchange where the currency is curiosity.
Fig 3. Photo of Sascha (left), Michael (middle), and Andrew (right) a few days before the first article launched.
Looking to the future, we have a lot of different projects we want to tackle, but we can't do them all at once. Your feedback will be important to prioritise our to-do list, and in return you will not only help shape the trajectory of asset.earth, but you are hastening development on topics or features you are interested in. Do you want shorter articles, or maybe video is more your medium? How about a collection of vegan recipes or eco-product rankings and recommendations?
Let us know—here is a link to a short 5 minute survey It's anonymous so you can be honest.
We will keep the survey open for a month to give everyone a chance and then it will close so we can start implementing the feedback. However, in case you miss it, we are always open to hearing opinions, inspirations, or just general musings. Drop a comment on a social media post, at the bottom of an article or email us directly at asset.earth.info@gmail.com. We are always “listening” (reading).
Wait, what’s that I hear, the sound of a coin tumbling through the air…? Meet Eimi, the latest addition to the asset.earth crew. She squares off the team with yet another differentiated perspective on the environment, but let’s hear from her directly!
Fig 4: Eimi officially joins asset.earth!
one more cent.
Hello hello lovely being here - Thank you Andrew for the intro! Nice meeting you everyone, I’m Eimi. Let me briefly introduce myself; I was born in Kawasaki, Kanagawa, then moved to the suburbs of Tokyo shortly after. Even though I grew up in Tokyo, I spent my childhood in a place surrounded by forests and nature, and so it did not feel urban at all. It is here that I first learned the values of community, and the beauty of nature. In the professional realm, I have the privilege of working in a global creative advertising agency as a social media strategist.
Outside of the professional sphere, I am an ocean lover who enjoys spending time in the water or just admiring the beauty of sea life. The ocean allows me to find solace and gives me inspiration. As you can guess, I am very focused on ocean conservation and I hope I can help raise your interest in marine life, so we can all work on improving the health of our beautiful mother ocean, together.
From one island girl to everyone, it is lovely meeting you ;)
