Circular economies for resilient islands

The Resilient Island Foundation was founded by five students of BK Bouwkunde. Their goal is to implement a circular economy of food and waste in the world’s most isolated communities. Their first project ‘Maldives Matter’ was selected as one of the five finalists at the TEDx Award in Amsterdam, out of 200 applications.

The Small Island Developing States, a group of 57 developing countries spread out in the world’s oceans and seas, are facing several challenges. Firstly, these communities are highly dependent on imported produce due to an unsuitable climate for crops. Secondly, they have a huge solid waste management problem, due to their isolated situation and a lack of financial investments. That means there are enormous problems on these locations that most people would describe as paradise. 

Trang Phan, Sebastiaan Brouwer, Stan van Stralen, Thomas Edes, and Melchior Bos started an ambitious project to tackle these issues by implementing current techniques in an innovative way. With the Maldives Matter Project, they wanted to enable a local and circular food production on the Maldives. By realizing a cooled greenhouse, run by locals, the local community is enabled to produce crops which they cannot produce within the current climate. When delivering the fresh and sustainable vegetables, the organic waste is retrieved. This waste can be turned into electricity for the village and greenhouse. With the profits of the greenhouse, the means to solve the other waste streams are created.

The TEDx Award Amsterdam champions ‘ideas worth doing’. From 200 applications, 5 final projects were selected. The Resilient Island Foundation was one of the five finalists and pitched their project live during the award ceremony. Find out more here.