Daan Bruggink: building naturally with ORGA
Daan Bruggink is one of the standard bearers of sustainable architecture in the Netherlands. If anything, he insists on building based on nature: ‘We at ORGA Architects first consider natural forms,’ he says. ‘Second, we consider natural techniques such as biomimetics and biomimicry. To give an example, the skin of a polar bear is black
PHA business case still shaky
Last week, we wrote about the versatile and biodegradable plastic PHA. The Dutch Platform Agro-Chemistry-Paper reacted to it: could you also highlight the pitfalls? Do you recognise the danger that most Dutch PHA projects start from waste as a feedstock, whereas there is no market demand for a product with such a background? In other
PHA: promising, versatile, biodegradable
PHAs are a family of naturally occurring polymers – no plastics in the usual sense of the word, but energy reserves of microorganisms. A very versatile family: we can process them to hard or soft plastics, and to both crystalline and amorphous polymers. And, very important: all members of the PHA family are biodegradable; not
Diversity is the key to new agriculture, says Louise Vet
‘In agriculture, much diversity has been lost, and as a consequence soils deliver less ecosystem services,’ says Louise Vet. ‘Just recently, we developed the tools to establish this – we can now analyse the DNA profile of soils. We have opened up the black box of the soil, and now discover many new opportunities that
Reconnect with nature – the new sustainability
At the Bio-Based Products World conference, in March in Amsterdam, two speeches struck me as particularly relevant to our times: that of Tom Domen (Ecover) and of Caroline Laurie (Kingfisher). Both companies are in the consumer market, and seem to have been struggling with the way to convey the message of sustainability to their customers.
Fibres of the future (1): cotton and its limits
World production of cotton will not increase much anymore, I read several times recently – mainly as the result of its large water requirements. Whereas we know for sure that global demand for fibres for clothing will continue to increase, primarily because of growing affluence. So we might well ask: how will a reasonably affluent
Sustainable Timber Tower on the Rise
Imagine a highly-urbanized city where wood is the icon of its skyscrapers, structures in timber towering over iron and concrete tall buildings. It is a vision that does not only challenge the popularity of steel construction but also sets a significant take on sustainability in the form of a creative design. The best part is:
Bamboo, a promising feedstock
Bamboo is a promising green feedstock. It is not only used for construction (approximately 1 billion people live in bamboo homes), we can now also make clothing from it and eat it. It is one of the fastest growing plants on earth, grows on degraded soils and does not need fertilizer or irrigation when cultivated.
