Simon Velez, Colombian architect, Marcelo Villegas, engineer, Oscar Hidalgo, architect, they all discovered the opportunities of bamboo as a building material. As Simon Velez says in the video below: 'We should combine mineral materials, such as concrete, with vegetal materials, such as bamboo. We are too much carnivorous architects and should be more vegetarian architects."
The Blue Economy is going a step further than the Green Economy. According to Gunther Pauli, founder of Ecover and author of 'The Blue Economy', the Green Economy leads to green solutions that are more expensive than the traditional ones, thus only feasible for the happy few (the rich ones). The Blue Economy aims at looking for solutions that are both sustainable and affordable. The Zero Energy Research Institute (ZERI) has been set up as a world wide network of researchers and entrepreneurs searching for this kind of solutions. Already 99 cases have been collected and every week a new case is presented.
In the framework of the Energy Cities' Annual Rendezvous 2012, 30 mayors from 30 European countries made 30 proposals for the energy transition of their cities and towns. With these proposals they want to showcase a collection of groundbreaking practices to the Rio +20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Their video message to Rio +20 can be found here.
The Cradle to Cradle Islands project was an Interreg IVB North Sea Region Project with 22 partners from six countries around the North Sea. Main goal was to develop innovative solutions in the field of energy, water and materials using C2C principles as a guide. The project just came to its end. All presentations and conclusions can be found on the project website.
Thuis in de stad (= Home in the city): an interesting and inspirational blog with very distinctive items on urban sustainability (urban farming, sustainable mobility, childfriendly cities and so much more). Both in Dutch and English
