Thanks to all our customers who have said they find what we are doing inspiring…as well as tasty 😊.
We love being a tiny part of this movement to cross the Green Bridge towards a more sustainable, regenerative… (and organic of course!)… human existence on Planet Earth. And we are just beginning.
The more we get involved, the more inspiring projects we see. So many mistakes are of course made, and so much hypocrisy arises on the journey… eg. I will state right now that we do not yet ALWAYS buy organic food! But what are ya gonna do?…we’ve got to start somewhere, we are doing better every day, and we are only human! So let’s celebrate the journey and cheer each other along.
In the spirit of this, I’m going to blog from time to time about the projects which are inspiring us most at the moment.
And this post is dedicated to….
Biomatrix Water
We don’t have far to look for our first inspiration. Lisa and Galen are our good friends and next door neighbours! Lisa is a talented artist and Galen is like the Duracell bunny, constantly on the move with schemes to live more sustainably.
This creative, talented team and their family came up with Biomatrix Water eight years ago.
Biomatrix Water designs and builds beautiful, living waterscapes – floating Islands – which improve natural water quality and provide natural, plant-based wastewater treatment solutions. They literally bring water to life! Seriously beautiful, seriously regenerative and seriously effective.
And their idea is now hitting the big time – they have done major projects, which have transformed urban spaces and water safety. For example, the world’s largest floating riverbank in Rennes, France, a floating park called the Wild Mile, in Chicago, and a solar powered floating water treatment system in Chennai, India (see picture below).
Biomatrix is of course now winning awards for what they do. They received the 2019 VIBES Scottish Environment Business Award for Climate Adaption and the American Planning Association’s 2019 strategic plan award for making great communities happen, for their Wild Mile project.
I’ve just asked Lisa what she feels have been their 2 biggest successes and 2 biggest failures …or shall we say learning curves?!.. on the journey so far. Here’s what she said…
“One of the things I consider to be one of our biggest successes has been including local people, water activists and school groups in our projects. For example, in London the local residents and community groups who live around the Regents Canal have helped to generate support for new projects, as well as to plant the Floating Ecosystems, to assemble, and to launch them. One of these sites, Kingsland Basin, is now considered to be an urban wildlife refuge.
Having this kind of engagement and local support really leads to the long-term success of the projects.
One of my favourite projects is in Manchester at the Bridgewater Hall Basin. We put in flower petal shaped Floating Islands around the central fountain as well as Floating Riverbanks along the edges. This transformed the hard edged, lifeless waterbody into a thriving aquatic ecosystem full of colour and biodiversity.
Before and After
In terms of failures… for one of our early projects we were working in the Philippines and we hadn’t taken into consideration that it would be hard for the team there to maintain the pumps for the aerators that were a part of that active canal water treatment. The pump maintenance wasn’t completed and the reactors sat dormant for several years.
Another failure… One year we received a faulty set of stainless-steel bolts from a supplier and so we ended up having to travel to several projects, on our expense, and re-do all the bolts for the anchoring!”
If you are inspired by this and want to find out more, go to the Biomatrix Water website at https://www.biomatrixwater.com/ or check out this video. Lisa has also recently held a webinar on the Biomatrix process, which you can find on this link.
Wow.. they’ve both also given TEDx talks Lisa TEDx, Galen TEDx. Go Lisa & Galen!
What about you? Anything you want to share which has inspired you, or which you are doing which can inspire us? We’d love to hear!
Sally from GBO.