Boekel Ecovillage is an inspiring example of sustainable living. This social housing project has 36 circular, biobased, climate positive, climate resilient, nature inclusive houses. In the ecovillage solutions for every SDG have been implemented and this integral approach combined with a number of building innovations has won them three separate sustainable building awards in 2021. This is a citizen led initiative and all 47 inhabitants have participated in the design and building of the houses.
Local
Netherlands
Province of North-Brabant and municipality Boekel.
Mainly rural
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
Yes
ERDF : European Regional Development Fund
Programme OPZuid, Promotion sustainable energy and low carbon economy (4F) 2019.
https://www.stimulus.nl/opzuid/avada_portfolio/de-schone-energiecentrale-in-ecodorp-boekel/
No
Yes
2021-12-01
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Ecodorp Boekel Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Ad Last name of representative: Vlems Gender: Male Nationality: Netherlands Function: Chairman Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Klein Rondeel 203 Town: Boekel Postal code: 5427GB Country: Netherlands Direct Tel:+31623543101 E-mail:ad@ecodorpboekel.nl Website:https://www.ecodorpboekel.nl/
Boekel Ecovillage is a shining example of people having a positive impact on their natural surroundings. It became the owner of dead soil and grass and it’s becoming an example of regeneration of natural ecosystems, using nature-based solutions to live while strengthening their natural surroundings. In the 36 award winning houses they have made room for people who need informal care and refugees. The members feel responsible for vulnerable humans as well as for the vulnerable nature surrounding them. Each member has worked two days per week for free for many years to reach this goal. Now it’s there, they have explained their way of life and way of building sustainable five times on national TV. They received three sustainable building awards for their houses. In 2028 their province will connect the area they live in to the adjacent Dutch National Conservation Area. Then the people of Boekel Ecovillage will have proven that humans can have a positive impact on their natural surroundings and by doing so increase the chances of future generations.
Climate action
Circular
Ecosystem services
Energy
Water
Saving energy: We save energy by using very good insulation, with walls as thick as 38cm. We are going to do an experiment with direct current (DC) in our houses. Solar panels produce DC, batteries store DC and most devices use DC. By eliminating the transformers we will probably save 16% in energy loss. We are going to monitor that process, to prove its effectiveness.
No fossil fuels: We haven’t used fossil fuels on the terrain during the building phase and will not use fossil fuels while we live here.
Zero emission heating system: Our innovative heating system does not produce any carbon.
100% circular buildings: The building materials we have used are 100% circular, made from waste and designed to be reusable. Everything from the underground infrastructure to the solar panels on the roof is circular.
Climate positive building: Our houses store 808 tons of carbon. If they would have been built with regular building materials 600 tons of carbon would have been emitted during the making of the building materials. We have used an alternative for cement for the first time in the Dutch history that is made from waste from ashes from steel recycling.
Climate resilient: Our houses are resilient to all weather extremes. Our roofs and solar panels are designed to be resilient to extreme hail. We have 90.000 litres of water storage to prevent flooding during extreme rain fall. We clean our waste water and let the filtered water infiltrate in the ground, so our ground water level remains high even during long drought. Our houses are well insulated to protect from heat stress.
Save drinking water: We save 60% drinking water by using rain water for our toilets, washing machines and gardens.
Our architect has designed our houses with principles of sacred geometry, principles that have been used in the design of the pyramids, temples and cathedrals. These give a positive energy to the people who live there. The houses are built in three circles with in the middle of each circle a place to meet. All three entrances of the circles point towards the outdoor community centre with a natural play area for the children. We have planted a climbing tree for the children that is made of 12 planes that will grow as one big tree. After 10 years you can climb in the middle of the tree upwards to three metres. You can there open a hatch that will bring you to a room of 4 metres high, made from woven branches of these 12 trees. The leaves will protect the children in the summertime from the scorching sun.
Next to it we are going to make a roofed terrace for the parents that will gather water and store it in an underground water tank. Children can play with the stored rain water during the summer.
We have succeeded in proving that it is possible to live sustainable, how rich or poor you are. Our houses are rental and residents who cannot afford them, can get subsidy for their rent from the government. The income from all rent that remains after the bank loan is paid will be used to finance starting sustainable communities. So after 30 years, we will finance starting communities for € 250.000 per year. We are the first housing project of VrijCoop, a sister organisation from the German Mietshäuser Syndikat that has 170 housing projects. The Mietshäuser Syndikat already exists for 30 years and they finance millions to starting communities each year. After another 30 years they probably don’t need banks anymore!
We have two houses for refugees and four houses for people who need informal care, which they get from the community members. We work together with the municipality to give them the combination from informal and professional care they need.
Boekel Ecovillage is a citizen led initiative. The houses and the adjacent food forest is designed by and for the members together with experts. But the impact on citizens grows far beyond the 47 members. Now 60 ecovillage initiatives are being created in the Netherlands. Most of these initiatives have visited Boekel Ecovillage to learn everything they need to realize their own community. And that is exactly the intention of the members of Boekel Ecovillage. The goal of Boekel Ecovillage is to be an inspiring example of sustainable living to other communities, to regular villages, even to cities. This ecovillage is considered by the province as their living lab and showroom. One of the decisionmakers of the province once said they want all the citizens of their province to live in 2050 the same as the ecovillagers live in 2022. They invested in Boekel Ecovillage for that purpose.
This ecovillage has given 60 tours in 2022 to 1112 people to inspire them to live more sustainable as a community or as a company. Because we need to change as a species! This year we reached 8 billion people on this small planet. Most of them have a negative impact on climate change, loss of biodiversity and use much more resources than the Earth can provide in a year. But if they learn to have a positive impact like the members of Boekel Ecovillage, mankind can solve all world problems it has created.
Boekel Ecovillage is going to build a digital platform that will gather all practical solutions to live with a positive impact in all 24 EU languages. We can test these solutions and give support and education in our future Knowledge and Education Centre on SDGs. This centre will gather and test solutions with a positive impact on all SDGs.
These solutions will be Open Source so everyone can use them without having to pay others. In fact, we would like this platform to subsidize those who don’t have the means to implement these solutions so we can make this world a better place.
Our municipality helped us to get exemption from a Dutch law so we could clean our waste water ourselves in stead of using the regional water treatment system. They also allowed us to do the building site preparation ourselves, so we could also have a high ambition in the infrastructure. That gave us the opportunity to have innovative circular underground power cables and water pipes. The largest cable producer in the world, Prysmian/Draka, tested a new circular cable under our soil thanks to the permission of our municipality.
The water board and the water utility company gave us important tips to improve our waterplan.
Our province gave us € 50.000 of subsidy when we just started and everything was just a dream and an ambition. With that money we could built temporary homes and start finding finance. When we bought the land they gave us € 200.000 more and a loan of € 1.2 million for 30 years. The whole management team and all selected officials of the province have visited us and the delegate that is responsible for Energy, visited us four times during the building phase. More than once I saw the province give a presentation in which they mentioned Boekel Ecovillage as a Best Practice.
Various ministries have visited us. The first director of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment that visited us, sent 5 civil servants to Spain to visit older ecovillages and investigate how they effected the natural environment they lived in. He was very happy with the results of the research and gave a presentation to all 80 directors of his ministry and ended by saying: ‘You should all visit sustainable local communities because that is where things really change’! Since his visit we had directors of ministries coming every year, until Covid. Our chairman was asked to cowrite a research for the ministry.
We have given two presentations on Boekel Ecovillage and it’s regeneration of the natural area to people from the EU en once at an EU symposium on Circular Economy.
We used biomimicry principles in our water plan, we gather rain water and store it in the ground (in underground water tanks to preserve quality), we save drinking water as much as we can, we filter our waste water with a constructed wetland. We store summer heat in metal and rock (in design similar to a volcano, minus the eruptions) to heat our houses for the colder seasons.
We have used knowledge from the EU about hurricane Katrina for the design of our houses. After Katrina thousands of people were forced to live in temporary homes, some for more than a year. The EU did a research on all of these temporary homes on safety and conflicts. The conclusion was that if the homes were placed in a circle or square and the inhabitants could meet in the middle, there were less conflicts, because people talked more with each other and conflicts were solved when they were still small. When children could play in the middle and parents and children could see each other, people also felt safer. That is why our houses are built in a circle.
We have had many meetings with innovation experts from water boards and our water company and improved our water plan according to their advices.
Our houses are built with circular and biobased building materials thanks to the expertise of our architect and our contractor. They both had a high ambition which they could fully reach thanks to the combined vision we all had. Our municipality Boekel was also a great help, because they approve the use of all innovative materials. The subcontractor that delivered a alternative to concrete, helped us also by using recycled sand and gravel in the mix. That is why our entire foundation is made from waste from other industries.
Our houses store 808 tons of carbon, this is calculated by Climate Cleanup and our project is part of a report on Construction Stored Carbon that was presented at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. See two documents on CSC for more information.
We have bought the land after it was used for decades by a regular farmer and sprayed with pesticides month after month. The soil was lifeless and deprived of minerals. The first part we focused on, was the soil of the food forest that was not so much affected as it was used as a horse pasture. But also there, the soil was poor, in fact only sand, with a small humus layer. We added volcanic powder to the soil which contains all of the essential elements to help plants grow. Then we covered the earth with compost and cardboard year after year. This improved the quality and life in the soil. We now have hundreds of different crops growing for our food, that is free for the inhabitants. All of the kitchen waste of all 36 households goes back into the garden soil after being upcycled to valuable compost. These hundreds of different crops are also a benefit for pollinators, as they have flowers through most of the year. We have 120 different fruit and nut trees and shrubs. When they have matured, we can provide in 60% of our own food consumption. Food that has not been transported, has not been treated with pesticides, has not been covered in plastic and has the highest nutrition possible.
How we exactly improved the soil is explained in the document ‘How Boekel Ecovillage improved the soil’.
Our water board has estimated that we probably infiltrate 4.000 litres of water each day. So even during long periods of drought our ground water level will not drop.
Our measurable biodiversity plan is unique in the Netherlands and has been presented to the EU on two occasions, as part of a policy paper on the EU Green Deal and how citizen led initiatives can bring this vision into practice. A year later our chairman could present this in 4 minutes as keynote speaker in a meeting with the EU Economic and Social Commission. See the document ‘Working with nature Policy Paper’ for more information.
Mainstream farmers grow monoculture, which is not resilient to weather extremes as all crops have the same vulnerable period in which a weather extreme can have mayor impact to the yield. Mainstream crops are mostly annual, so they have very small roots and cannot reach ground water level. This makes them vulnerable to periods of drought. Mainstream farmers use pesticides to kill insects, which has a very bad impact to all species that eat insects. Many hectares of the same plant species can increase the risk of a plague or a disease.
We have hundreds of different crops, mostly shrubs and trees whose roots have reached ground water level so they can last through periods of drought. The high diversity in plants results in being beneficiary to thousands of insect species. We don’t spray pesticides and because we have polyculture, we are not bothered by plagues or diseases.
The mainstream building sector is responsible for 35% of all carbon output. Our houses store 808 tons of carbon, what makes them climate positive.
See the two documents on Construction Stored Carbon that were presented at COP26 in Glasgow.
Our houses were designed to withstand all weather extremes. Mainstream building contractors do not do that as they don’t feel responsible for the consequences of weather extremes.
Mainstream heating systems still use a lot of power from outside sources in wintertime to heat houses. Our heating system is so innovative, we don’t need power from outside in wintertime to heat our houses. We only use the stored summer heat for the rest of the year.
In our approach we used natural processes to guide us. With our ambition we reached as high as possible to increase maximum publicity and impact, just like a plant reaches for sunlight. Our goal was to show humans can have a positive impact on their natural surroundings, live within the boundaries of what our Earth can provide without harming other people and with that increasing the chances of future generations. We aimed for the highest possible ambition on all SDGs and were helped by various levels of government and innovative companies and organisations to reach these ambitions. And we gave back too because we always strive for win-win situations. We gave the closing presentation on an EU symposium on Circular economy in practice. Our chairman was asked by a Dutch ministry in 2022 to cowrite a research on the value of citizen led initiatives for policy makers (see document Dutch National Environmental Programme 2022 sustainable initiatives as guides for policy.pdf). To top it off in 2022 we were asked to give a 4 minute presentation on Boekel Ecovillage to the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Committee of the Regions (see presentation in the document 28-11-2022 Boekel Ecovillage as Best Practice human-nature relationships.pdf). You can watch that presentation on this webpage: https://www.ecodorpboekel.nl/inspiratie-voor-de-eu-over-een-betere-verbinding-tussen-mens-en-natuur/
We want all elements of our project to be replicated or transferred to other places as much as possible. If we win the NEB award, the winnings will mostly go to the programming of a digital platform, the Global Goals Community (GGC), in which all elements of our project will be explained in all 24 EU languages as simple step-by-step todo lists. Everybody can pick elements to make their own community more sustainable. It will be a platform with citizens and communities as target group.
We are mentioned in a Dutch law for innovative and sustainable projects and got exemption from the Dutch building code. Because it was going well in our project, the Dutch building code was changed and our exemptions were added, so all other Dutch building projects can use them.
We are also going to make an Artist-in-Residence, a place where an artist can live for a month. Each artist will be asked to invent an Open Source solution to reach one or more SDGs. When they give their presentation, students of the Academy for Creative Economy will listen and design a business case with multiple values and we will publish that business case on our GGC platform in all EU languages. People all around Europe can earn a living by making the world a better place!
Climate action: Inspiring the Dutch building sector to build climate positive by using biobased and circular building materials. Introducing geopolymer as an alternative for concrete and thus giving an example how to save 8% of all carbon output worldwide.
Designing our houses and our food production to be resilient to all weather extremes. We are part of a worldwide research project on how to prepare for a global warming of 2,5°C and higher.
Loss of biodiversity: Implementing a measurable biodiversity plan that will regenerate natural ecosystems and raising biodiversity to a level that is as high as is possible now by using polyculture.
Shortage of natural resources: Never use fossil fuels and try alternatives to rare earth metals. Using as many ecosystem services as possible in a way that strengthens our natural surroundings. Using circular materials and short loops where we can.
Clean and affordable energy: Testing a heating system that produces clean and free heat for all users and that can be used all over the world without rare earth metals.
Ending poverty: Making a social housing project that can be replicated with free and healthy food for all inhabitants and free energy for heating.
We are going to share all our knowledge and experience Open Source and online for everybody to use.
