Why are more sustainable eco-villages cropping up in Europe and beyond?

euronews (in English)

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.

Transcript

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]

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