- Gerard is taking me to see something very cool:
A project that is the embodiment
of Amsterdam's circular economy.
- This is a lighthouse project or a "living lab."
It's a place of experimentation.
- A residential building covered in reused materials
prospected from the canals of the Netherlands.
Not just energy neutral, but energy positive.
But this is just one example of a growing effort
to mine the built environment of Amsterdam
to collect raw materials for reuse
in the construction of new buildings.
What is going on here?
Why are they building this way?
Well, Amsterdam is trying to become
the world's first circular city with the ambitious goal
of reducing virgin, raw material use in half by 2030,
and to be fully circular in 2050.
The city has identified three sectors
ripe with potential for circularity:
Construction, food, and consumer goods.
Passionate Amsterdamers have piloted over 70 projects
and experiments to find ways
to lower the city's environmental impact
to meet the conditions of the Paris Agreement.
What makes their approach different
from other cities doing the same?
Their focus on waste.
So we came to Amsterdam
to see how they're using yesterday's trash
as today's resources.
A goal of circularity is to cut emissions.
New building materials are energy-intensive to produce.
If you can cut the use of virgin materials,
not only do you save the energy needed to produce them,
you also prevent releasing carbon
when materials like wood are incinerated at the end of life.
- All right, well this is it.
- And so this building
is utilizing, essentially, recycled wood?
- Yeah.
What we've done is we've sourced this wood
from where it's used as cladding for the sides
of the canals and the waterways in the Netherlands.
The facade that you see over here,
so all of the darker wood is actually recycled as obi-
it's tropical hardwood, and we needed
that type of dense wood because of fire regulations.
- Utilizing recovered materials requires
the extra step of ensuring they're suitable for reuse.
Unfortunately, this is something Gerard
had to learn the hard way.
- I bought like 200 mooring poles like this
from a demolisher.
These are 200 different ones,
again, because the ones that we bought had a lot of metal,
they weren't as suitable as we thought before,
so sadly, part of those we had to incinerate,
and then we used what we could.
- So when this building is ready,
you're gonna be living here?
- Yes.
It reflects a lot of the principles
of bio-based, sustainable, and circular construction.
But this is a personal project
with a group of friends that we've realized,
basically in the evenings and the weekends.
- I love it.
Yeah.
- All right, so this is like office spaces here.
All that you can see here is CLT,
so it's all cross-laminated timber.
This is for storing kids-
and this is going to be mine.
So it's nice.
For Amsterdam standards, it's quite decent size.
- Quite roomy.
I live in New York and my apartment is, I think,
fits in just this.
- In the living room.
Serious?
- You think Gerard would let me live here?
Yeah, I love it.
I wanna come live here.
- Yeah!
- Do you have any empty space?
- No, we're full.
- Sure, Gerard.
No, I get it.
What are the trade-offs of using recycled material?
What are the challenges?
Is it more expensive to do it this way?
Is it harder to do it this way?
- Currently, it's more expensive
because labor is taxed heavily;
material use and CO2 emissions are not.
The incentive is kind of in the wrong direction,
and doing something not standard in terms of logistics,
in terms of construction, in terms of design,
costs, labor, therefore costs money,
therefore is less realistic, let's say.
- Gerard is pointing out
a crucial economic challenge to circularity:
You have to pay a person to find and inspect
the materials for reuse, but in most cases,
it's actually cheaper just to produce new materials.
- So if you want to use reused materials
in a construction project,
where do you even begin to get them?
- The trick is that there's not really a market
for this-yet.
So the challenge isn't so much the knowledge
of where these materials are,
the challenge is actually creating a market for them,
and finding a good destination for them in time as well.
Final set of stairs, guys!
- Here's yet another circular innovation:
Amsterdam sees its rainwater as a resource,
and now mandates capture and reuse practices.
- The rainwater crates capturing all the rain,
leading it down through the facade,
or down through to the garden,
any new building has to be able to deal with
its own rainwater, and no storm sewage
is paid for by the city anymore,
you just have to take care of it yourself.
And this is gonna be Friday afternoon drinks, I think.
- We write about a brewery that makes beer from rainwater
that gets captured on the rooftop.
Maybe you guys could do that in the building!
That'd be cool!
- Actually, one of the inhabitants is starting a brewery
in the parking garage.
- Oh, there you go.
Gerard may not let me live with him,
but I'll be back to whoop him in beer pong
in the parking garage.
A city can encourage circularity
with subsidies and regulations,
but it's the citizens that must choose to live it.
Like Gerard and his friends, it was the resident architects
and future inhabitants of the floating ecovillage,
Schoonschip, our next stop, that made it a reality.
- All right, now deliver your VO line.
- Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Here, circular technologies create
energy self-sufficiency
from the surrounding natural resources.
At Schoonschip, circular practices meet daily human living.
Amber and Pascal live in a floating home here,
which they design themselves.
- We actually use the water that we float in
as a source of energy.
We have only one connection to the city network.
We are actually buffering the net.
Apparently, we are the first residential neighborhood
that does that.
We can make biogas out of the wastewater,
and we can even retrieve the phosphor out of it.
- It's a real pilot project, and everything is open source.
There were a lot of things we had to find out
because nobody did it before.
- Each individual home builder chose their own
construction materials, but across the community,
steel was avoided, recycled materials were common,
cork and hemp were used by some for installation,
and a key principle of circularity was embraced:
Construction with future disassembly
and material reuse in mind.
- In the past, there was a lot of industry here
and there has been pollution,
and then now we get a chance to live here.
We try to clean it up ourselves as far as we can.
To me, that's also a way of circular thinking.
- Yeah, so not just avoiding creating more damage
but actually trying to fix the damage from the past.
- Yeah. - Exactly.
- That's when you take circularity
in a wider perspective in time.
Schoonschipmake: "to make clean ship,"
is a Dutch expression
for starting all over again and doing it in a good way.
- That seems appropriate.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Can you help me say the word right?
Can you help me saying schoon-ship,
which I know is not right.
- But she says 'schoonschip,' she says,
and I say 'schoonschip.'
- Schoonschip.
- Schoon.
- Okay, I can get a little closer to that than schoonschip.
Gerard's recycled wood came from the canals.
Amber and Pascal's home is powered
by the river it floats in.
Circularity in a city like Amsterdam
means embracing all the unique opportunities
the ever-present water provides.
Last year, Amsterdamers threw away
almost 80 million kilograms of organic waste-
basically, a whole lot of food.
When it's incinerated, CO2 is released.
One city program collects biowastes from homes
and uses it as fuel to power buildings.
These experimental test sites are modest in number,
but they're expanding across the city.
Another effort lets food be food.
Unspoiled groceries are wasted when stores feel
they can no longer sell them after a certain date.
Nonprofit Buurt Buik rescues food from the stores
before it's discarded, and provides it to local communities.
And because this is Amsterdam,
the food is collected by bike.
- So we're called Buurt Buik,
which translates to "neighborhood belly."
So from the neighborhood to fill our bellies
with food waste.
And we're rescuing food here,
picking it up out of the neighborhood.
We don't manage to cook everything,
so we'll be making bags,
and then everybody's able to take them home.
Normally, it is would be kind of going through
the garbage bin, so.
- And there was nothing wrong with it.
- No, so you can see, so they're like discounted.
So they're still good for another week.
But yeah, you can't sell them anymore.
If you look at the city, they're very much promoting
kind of the (speaking Dutch) of the neighborhood,
and then the municipality really supports us
both financially, but also helps us get into contact
with local entrepreneurs and really prevent food waste.
- This may seem like a niche solution,
but it's also easily replicable
wherever there's good food going to waste,
citizens that are hungry,
and people who are willing to do something about both.
- Oh she's the boss, huh?
- Yeah, she's the boss.
We must listen to her.
- I double as the director, host, and schlepper.
- Schlepper!
- Like many cities worldwide,
Amsterdam's population is growing;
that means an increasing demand for consumer goods.
In order to meet that demand,
while at the same time cutting virgin material use,
companies across the city are embracing
'repair, recycle, and reuse' to prolong
the utilization of materials
that would otherwise become waste.
The United Repair Center takes damaged goods
from across Northern Europe and well, repairs them.
- We have become a throwaway society.
Clothing is number two of the waste in the world.
Everybody throws away their stuff.
And by repairing it,
you can use it for a longer period of time.
We do clothing repairs, business-to-business.
- So if I'm a customer of one of the brands,
and I have a piece of clothing
that needs to be repaired I submit it through the brand,
and it comes to you all to be repaired?
- Exactly.
- Brands like Patagonia and Nudi Jeans
provide free repairs for life on their products,
and offer take back programs for unwanted items
that are then resold or repurposed.
- Our aim is to keep garments from landfill.
By repairing it, people can use their garment longer
for a longer period of time,
and we do it with tailors not from Holland,
they are refugees.
So that's also our social goal to give them the opportunity
to have a well-paid job.
I think sportswear suits doing a repair job very well,
but denims as well, because everybody loves their denim.
You're attached to it, and if you can repair it,
then that's awesome!
- When clothing items can no longer be repaired,
they can be collected, assessed, and sorted.
And then the textiles they're made from
can be processed for reuse.
Here at the House of Denim,
they're teaching the next generation of designers
to embrace rags to riches, quite literally.
This is material from jeans that people were wearing
here in Amsterdam that then gets recycled
and made into new jeans here?
- Yes.
- Is there anyone else in Amsterdam doing this?
- No.
- You're the only one?
- Yes.
This is kind of like a 'denim innovation hub'
where you have consumers who can walk in
and buy sustainable jeans,
where you have students who can either study Jean School,
or they can book a course, make your own jeans,
or we have a showroom with the sustainable denim mill.
So either designers or developers from brands
come over here to select their fabric,
and in the back we have a denim innovation lab
with a laser and eco-stone machine.
- What's the the kind of mission
or the goal of the washing lab?
- The whole industry is quite polluting,
and there's a lot of green washing.
We want to separate us from that.
For example, the laser machine is really sustainable.
It's only working on power.
- Whoa, that's wild!
- Normally, you need like seven and a half thousand liters
to create a wash, and with a laser,
you need like 10 seconds of power.
That's it.
We have a stone wash that also is better,
because we use less water.
We don't use unfriendly chemicals.
- Is a lot of the focus always on sustainability?
- It's only focus.
We are the only organization in Holland
who's working in denim, who's sustainable from day one,
always including innovation and craftsmanship
'cause I think people forget that things have to be made.
So basically, by having these talents
behind a sewing machine, making their own things,
that's what we are lacking
in our way of thinking about the world.
We forget that we have people making stuff.
- Seeing this next generation of makers at work
has been inspiring.
Their innovative thinking, their high-minded craftsmanship,
their commitment to sustainability,
their incredible, no, they're amazing.
They're fantastic.
All right.
Cut the s***, Jason.
Just tell them why you're really here.
We are going to see if we can repair
my favorite pair of jeans.
This is my favorite pair of jeans;
it has a massive hole in the crotch.
- Can you tell me how you ripped those jeans
and then be like-
- I have fat thighs!
My $30 pair of stretchy jeans
are what's known as fast fashion:
quickly produced, cheaply sold, easily discardable apparel.
This ecosystem is not, as you can imagine,
great for the environment, nor Mariette-approved.
Wish me luck.
- And one of the directors got a hole in a pant
which is fast fashion, so I wanted to ask you,
if you can repair this.
- Right now? Right now?
- Yeah, if you can.
I just want people to have more awareness
on what they're buying, and if you keep an item for life,
I'm happy.
- Well, I've had those jeans for about a decade,
so I think I've been doing pretty good.
- I'm super happy that we can have you.
Floor is yours!
- Thank you.
- How do you feel?
How is your trip to the House of Denim?
- It's great, yeah.
I'm learning about what they're doing
to educate the next generation,
and we're seeing some of the repair work they do,
and now they're repairing my favorite pair of jeans,
which I brought all the way from the U.S.
just for this scene.
So I'm super excited.
- I was also a little scared
that if I brought fast fashion, I'd get shamed for it.
I'm like, "I don't have any."
- Fast fashion penne.
- I mean, yeah, no, it's 50/50 what we get in here...
fast fashion and really nice denim pieces.
- Yeah, I think you made a good point
that it makes it accessible to people,
but then you need to actually value it.
Don't just buy it and throw it out.
- That's true.
Like what you're doing right now.
It makes your fast fashion less fast.
- Exactly.
We're slowing it down a little bit.
- Yeah.
- The next generation will definitely make the difference,
because if you teach them, already from day one
to be sustainable, there's going to be a different world.
So we love the next generation for that,
because they completely get it.
- In order to change an entire industry,
you have to shape the mindset of the makers
when they're students and try to transform
the mindset of the consumers with sustainable options
they'll not only buy, but commit to caring for
over the long term.
- This is your end result.
- Amazing.
I'll be back in a couple years
to probably get them repaired again!
Amsterdamers taught us that waste as we understand it
is a man-made concept,
and one that we may actually be getting wrong.
If you choose to see waste as a potential resource,
it could start to shift the way
the economies of our cities function.
Our trip to Amsterdam has been encouraging,
but they're still a long way off
from becoming a fully circular economy,
and it's apparent that for now at least,
circularity is best viewed as a sustainability tool
to be used within their current economic system,
not a tool to replace or revolutionize it.
But the idea is catching on.
Seattle, Montreal, Auckland, and Nairobi
are just a few cities
working towards creating more circular systems.
In Amsterdam, we met the people building a movement
towards circularity with experiments and projects
that are novel, but also hopefully eventually scalable
in a way that would transform life
for Amsterdamers across their city.
Big changes often start small.
- It's just comfortable, you know?
- Yeah!
- The inside pocket of these jeans ripped open,
and so I asked my grandma like,
"Can you tell me how to sew?"
And she was like, "Go on YouTube."
Yeah, my grandma learns more stuff on YouTube than I do!