Tanja van der Knoop

Today is the UN's International Day against Racism and Discrimination. And we couldn't have found a better day to launch our film project, Take the Time!

Green City Buzz is turning Secret Village​ (Reguliersdwarsstraat) into a green, open-minded urban living room, where everyone feels at home - no matter their ethnicity, gender, sexuality or age. So we wanted to show what happens there when strangers meet and #takethetime to just have a chat.

#takethetime and share!

We want to locally grow & distribute oyster mushrooms from a locally diverted waste stream: office and hospitality coffee grounds. For this process, you need four things: coffee grounds, mushroom spawn, a cold room and a warm room.

We’ve started collecting green waste and coffee grounds from fourteen businesses in Secret Village (west part of Reguliersdwarsstraat and its side streets), every weekday. We currently compost all of it in the area, but we’d like to start producing oyster mushrooms from the coffee grounds ASAP. We’ve secured the cold room, but we’ve yet to find a small local space (±10m2, ±500m from Muntplein) that can function as the warm room. We’re also working on finalising a participation project with the municipality, for manpower needed for the collection and distribution of coffee grounds and mushrooms.

See also

Secret Village project page: www.greencitybuzz/secret-village

To read about all our activities in Secret Village, navigate to http://www.greencitybuzz.nl/secret-village/#projecten

Green City Buzz is realising the construction of several solar energy systems (PV) on flat roofs throughout the city center.

As it stands, the process to install a PV system - subsidies & funding, permits, construction, the works - is quite complex. In this trial project we’re trying to achieve two things: a patchwork blanket of solar roofs in central Amsterdam, to further renewable energy production, reduce fossil power reliance, and create an example for other areas; and two, to simplify the process and lower the threshold for property owners or corporate tenants in future.

At the moment we’ve assured several interested parties and SDE+ subsidies. We’d love to add more applicants to the group, and scale up this project.