🌍 Do you feel the love of life and all living systems? GLIMPS.bio DEC2020-Issue
THE LOVE OF LIFE AND ALL LIVING SYSTEMS
When do you experience biophilia? And can we use it as a tool to tackle this healthcare crisis?
At GLIMPS.bio, the love for nature is what drives us in everything we do. We just cannot resist being drawn by life’s magic.
And we all have a strong inner urge to affiliate with other forms of life. It is genetically ingrained inside our genes. This need to reconnect with nature, coined by Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson as Biophilia, explains the link between personal well-being and nature. It’s our inner love of life and all living systems. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life we tend to forget this tendency to seek connections with nature. But the current COVID-19 pandemic and confinement reminded us of our inner biophilia as a way to find peace of mind. It improves our psychophysical well-being and our health. We are convinced that this love for all living systems and the strive towards sustainability will be one of the positive things coming out of this crisis.
But what if we take this one step further and apply biophilia-based design (Biophilic Design) to help us to alleviate the current healthcare crisis? Biophilic Design is a concept to increase our connectivity to the natural environment through the use of direct nature, indirect nature, and space & place conditions when designing buildings or objects. Research has shown that it helps patients to recover faster. In 1984, Ulrich completed in his study in Science magazine the best known and most thorough study on 46 patients linking views of nature to/with hospital recovery from surgery:
“The patients were assigned essentially randomly to rooms that were identical except for window view: one member of each pair overlooked a small stand of deciduous trees; the other had a view of a brown brick wall. Patients with the natural window view had shorter postoperative hospital stays, had fewer negative comments in nurses’ notes (“patient is upset,” “needs much encouragement”), and tended to have lower scores for minor post-surgical complications such as persistent headache or nausea requiring medication. Moreover, the wall-view patients required many more inject[ion]s of potent painkillers, whereas the tree-view patients more frequently received weak oral analgesics such as acetaminophen.”
Other studies have found similar findings that confirm these “Healing powers” of nature and even prescribing nature is now a thing. Using nature as a medicine or as a source of inspiration to redesign our hospitals is the way to go. And Biophilic Design is giving us the right tools to do it.
And Biophilia is the common thread in all of our projects. Whether we go for impact by valorising coffee waste in our Urban Biorefinery project or we fascinate people about the future of biology in our Van Eyck Reloaded project, our connection to nature is what drives us. But I want to draw your attention to our BEAT THE CONCRETE project in particular. A project that wants to trigger youngsters to create nature based solutions. Out of 776 European projects, we got selected as one of the Ecover’s Fertilise The Future finalists. With this initiative, Ecover wants to help fund the sustainable start-ups and eco-pioneers of tomorrow. But we need your support to win this competition. You can find out more about the project, the collaboration with Broei and how you can support us in the section on the Beat The Concrete project.
VOTE for our project by giving us a #glimpsxecover comment on Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram!
Likes are good, hashtags are better!
Thanks for sticking up with us and looking forward to share with you the next newsletter by the end of the year.
Jasper, on behalf of the GLIMPS.bio team.
VOTE FOR #GLIMPSxECOVER!
What if you could beat the concrete greening up your neighbourhood?
With BEAT THE CONCRETE we want to reboot our relationship with nature and provide a resilient future to those most impacted facing the global pandemic. By integrating nature, design and tech, we want to empower and inspire under-resourced young people to roll up their sleeves and implement nature-based solutions like green walls in their own neighbourhood. Beating the concrete will help them to beat the odds.
We believe that learning from nature and taking action are key in achieving big wins. By transforming the public space as green pioneers, young people become changemakers in our society and function as role models for their community. With BEAT THE CONCRETE, they will take a lead on reconnecting us with nature and pave the way to #buildbackbetter.
VOTE for our project by giving us a #glimpsxecover comment on Facebook and Instagram!
URBAN BIOREFINERY
What if spent coffee grounds were bio-resources?
More than 20 startups, companies & experts participated in the online Urban Biorefinery Challenge for coffee grounds!
Our ultimate goal is the realisation of a new circular ecosystem for the industrial valorisation of coffee grounds in Flanders. During the Kick-off meeting we laid the foundations for various pilot projects to launch in the spring of 2021 in Ghent. Think of turning coffee grounds into oil, soap, food & material applications. During this pilot phase of three months, our ambition is to collect 28 tons of coffee grounds and convert them into circular products. On the 17th of November, we’ll kick-off a similar trajectory for the valorisation of bread waste.
Interested in joining the Urban Biorefinery Challenge?
Reach out to Dimitri (dimitri@glimps.bio) for more info and join us!
A project by GLIMPS.bio, with partners SUEZ Belgium, IVAGO and supported by Stad Gent, UGent — association and Circular Flanders.
Follow our project page on Linkedin: https://bit.ly/305LE7l
OUR DEEP-DIVE INTO BIOFABRICATION & MORE
What if you could learn to design with biology?
Our GLIMPS.bio-LABS is alive! We’re happy to have 22 bioneers from all over the world joining this online program. We miss the close human touch, of course. But it’s very inspiring to look at our screens and see participants logging in from Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland, Belgium, France, Sweden and Germany. We’re all together in this bio-based journey towards a more sustainable future.
NOTWORKING
Our first NOTworking Apéro was a blast!
We gathered in a 13th Century Castle in the heart of Ghent for an evening of open mic, stories and talks on the interplay of of Bio, Design, Tech and entrepreneurship.
Check out the pictures of the event here!
We look forward to having a next edition when the corona measures allow it. Stay tuned to our channels to know when to join us!
VAN EYCK, ART & BIOTECH
Van Eyck Reloaded
As the days are getting colder and shorter, our temporary residence in the Duivelsteen castle is coming to an end, and so is our project, Van Eyck Reloaded!
We are very grateful that even in these COVID-times, we were able to: facilitate a dozen cool workshops on microbiology, design and more, inspire hundreds of visitors of the castle with the smell of God and our aquaponics-installation, meet 3 companies of the future in our successful online lecture, grow mushrooms on coffee-waste with our local newcomers, organize a connecting NOTworking Apero. But the best of all: to be part of amazing collective of vastly different, but like-minded organizations and its fruitful cross-pollination. Thank you all for coming and cocreating! See you next year in the second, hopefully less Corona-dominated, edition!
See more of our activities on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn.
Warm regards,
from the GLIMPS.bio team
