Of course we wish all our friends, acquaintances and good relations a great 2020. A new year with new opportunities, what more could a person want. In any case, we at Triple E are progressing at full throttle (but low nitrogen and CO2 positive, of course). 

It was still very busy around the turn of the year and that is clearly visible on our website. Because for those who want what from us, we have installed two sales modules, namely a webshop where our books are for sale (https://www.tripleee.nl/boeken/)  and a webshop where our Brickz are for sale (https://www.tripleee.nl/brickz/). In the near future, we will continue to expand and improve these two online stores. But you can already enjoy digital shopping. From now on it is always a bit Old and New, shall we say. An ‘old’ product like books and an innovative product like Brickz, both for sale on our new website.

As for the Brickz, we have even more good news, since we have now also received a European patent. So we are making good progress with the Brickz, because a European patent is much heavier than a Dutch patent. So the new patent replaces the old patent. Fortunately, this changing of the guard went very smoothly.

In line with the Fiber2Fiber project, where we are now successfully breaking down asbestos with mycorrhiza, we are going to work on an investigation into the possibilities of breaking down PFAS with mycorrhiza. That will probably have to happen to new organisms, because the old ones only like asbestos and shouldn’t have any of this old-fashioned craziness.

In addition, we have received a subsidy with a broad alliance of parties from RVO to put a number of new biotechnological conversion techniques into practice. On the one hand, we do this with our ‘old acquaintances’ from the Knowledge Center for Paper and Cardboard (https://www.kcpk.nl/), and on the other hand with new friends from Outlander Materials (https://www.outlandermaterials.com/).

In phytorefinery ‘the Growning Place’, the old trees fly out the door and the new cuttings fly into the greenhouse. So here too New Year’s Eve is celebrated. 

In the context of Fiber2Fiber, we are also already designing the next round of tests with WWTP sludge as a substrate for the cultivation of biomass. A new round of tests that will certainly go even better based on the old results.

For our project in the province of Brabant, together with the State Forestry (Staatsbosbeheer), we are mapping the residual flows from nature management that can serve as the basis for the Brickz. So that is going well.

In Overijssel we are even a few steps further (since we also started earlier), and we can even start planting trees that have been grown in phytorefinery ‘the Growing Place’ on a substrate that consists of residual flows from nature reserves, thus completing the circle. We are investigating whether we can create a nice moment around the planting of the first tree.

Tom Bade is writing a book about the emergence of a new wave of conservationists that has emerged over the past two years. This third green wave focuses mainly on protecting forests and trees and against biomass, and is therefore quite opposed to the ‘old’ more established organizations. The book will also discuss the desired and necessary symbiosis of these two movements. 

For those who do not feel like reading an entire book, but still want to read something from Tom, here is a link with some articles from the ‘old box’, which are still surprisingly topical in terms of content. https://www.trouw.nl/auteur/tom-bade?referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

It’s going to be a great year!