Smart Regions spoke to Ad Vlems, the project manager of the award-winning Ecovillage Boekel in the Netherlands about what difference a sustainable housing community like his can make for the planet.
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00:00 How can Europe's building sector become climate positive?
00:05 Could this sustainable eco-village in the Netherlands be replicated?
00:09 Ad Vlemm's project manager of EcoVillage Berkel tells us more.
00:14 One third of all carbon output is done by the building sector.
00:18 So by building with biobased materials, they can change that immediately.
00:22 Our houses are made with biobased materials
00:26 and therefore they store 800 tons of carbon inside of them.
00:30 And if we would have built them with regular building materials,
00:34 600 tons of CO2 would be output.
00:39 So if the building sector is going to change to working with building materials,
00:43 then they would have a positive impact on the climate.
00:46 We don't have enough resources for all the people that are there in the world,
00:52 so we need to use waste from industries to make our houses from.
00:58 And this material is made from old jeans that are not used anymore.
01:04 So it's also biobased, but it's also circular.
01:08 And this is made from a plant, it's called Flax,
01:11 and we use this as insulation in the roof.
01:14 In the Netherlands there are 43 eco-villages that want to be an eco-village,
01:21 but they are not yet an eco-village.
01:23 And there are four that either live there already
01:26 or they are starting to build now or building now.
01:29 And in Europe there are thousands of eco-villages
01:32 and worldwide 100,000 in total.
01:36 Even in Senegal there is a ministry of eco-villages
01:39 that has the assignment, the goal, to make all the villages sustainable
01:45 on energy, water, food, so that they can be more resilient.
01:51 [Music]