Normally our newsletter appears at the beginning of every new month, but this time a little later. That is not because we have no news, but mainly to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2021 in these special times. We look back on a special year, in which we made great leaps forward despite the Corona crisis. Here are a few highlights:

1. We won the European Inspiration Award for the project “Dredging, cuttings and grass clippings from the own region based on Brickz”.
2. Within the Fiber2Fiber project, we have definitively demonstrated that we can break down asbestos with the help of mycorrhiza.
3. We have successfully made the step to growing trees based on dredging and residual flows from nature areas. To this end, we have also become a member of NAK horticulture, so that we can also sell the trees.
4. We have a complete production line for the Brickz, including a composter from TEN Composting and even a pilot production line for fiber processing. In the latter we work together with our partner Conpax. With this we have converted the location in Huissen into a fully-fledged phyto-refinery.
5. Dagmar Bade has joined the company that can now actually be called a family business.
6. We have successfully set up our Bosje Bomen website. And let there be no doubt: we were the first party to market the term Bosje Bomen.
7. We have invested in the countryside, in the cultivation of miscanthus and the storage of our raw materials.
8. We have carried out / in progress consultancy assignments for the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, the Animal Protection and the Goois Nature Reserve.
9. Within the framework of the 3Bct project, we have created residual flows from the beer production of Brouwerij Vet and Lazy Brickz, which we use for the cultivation of hops that are used by Vet and Lazy in its beers.
10. We are successful in growing miscanthus on a substrate of sewage sludge developed in-house. We work closely together with the Drents Overijsselse Delta water board in this regard.
11. We have received a European patent for Brickz.

If we look at next year, we can already see a number of assignments and new developments.

1. Last month, we were awarded a project by the province of Gelderland to develop an automated system in which we can automatically calculate the composition of the Brickz based on the wishes of the customer on the one hand and the available stocks on the other. We will also collaborate with NIOO-KNAW in the field of the microbiology required for Brickz.
2. Bavaria visited our phytorefinery in Huissen this year and both parties have expressed the intention to further develop the collaboration in 2021.
3. Within the framework of Fiber2Fiber, we will be working on the field trials in which we will test the VezelBrickz (term has now been fixed, because we are learning to better protect ourselves against plagiarism).
4. We are going to perfect the process of extracting fibers from miscanthus and also work with grass from nature areas as a carrier for fibers.
5. We are going to collaborate with NIOO-KNAW and the Westerdijk Institute to break down PFAS with the help of fungi. The first tests we conducted at our phytorefinery ‘The Growning Place’ were positive and this calls for follow-up. This innovation is a (new) part of Fiber2Fiber for which the province of Gelderland has granted approval.
6. With our partner Free Soil, we are going to work with Brickz for wine growing in France.
7. We will further expand the collaboration with our partner Seven Waves from Rob Wolters, starting with a major symposium that we are organizing for the project ‘Dredging, cuttings and grass clippings from the own region based on Brickz’.
8. For Bosje Bomen we are going to work together with Feelz van Esther van Apeldoorn in the field of meaning trees for special events.
9. For the Goois Nature Reserve and the Animal Protection, books will be published about the future of the Gooise nature and the future of ‘dislodging’ (as a profitable alternative for hunting).
10. With Landscape Overijssel we are going to create a food forest in which the trees are grown on residual flows from nature areas. This in the context of our Pop assignment, the long title of which we have already mentioned a few times here.
11. We are going to collaborate with Aqua Minerals, where we will investigate whether we can turn their pulverized coal into a soil improver (based on Brickz) despite the presence of PFAS.

In these special times, it is especially important to look forward and continue to believe that a better future lies ahead. Let’s use Christmas to think about how we can all make the world a little better in our own little way. And let’s just get started on this in the new year. Forward, that’s the only way to get through all the hard times, we know that from our own experience.