Greenhouse by Joost (2022) Movie Script
1
JOOST BAKKER: The most
destructive thing
we humans do is eat...
..which is madness.
And it's because we've
got this stupid system
that doesn't
respect and value waste.
We've spent the last
hundred years
removing ourselves
from our food system
and I think we need to spend
the next hundred years
living in our food system
like we've done
for millions of years.
The World Bank say
that between 30 and 40% of the
food that's actually grown today
is wasted.
Nature doesn't have waste.
A tree that falls down
in this forest,
it actually creates
all these resources
for so many other species
to get started again.
It's a perfect example
of a closed loop system.
I don't see why a house should
be any different to this.
I've always had this dream
that our homes
can be a place that provides us
with everything that we need.
Imagine if our houses
grew our food.
Imagine our cities as
ecosystems feeding themselves.
Imagine if we could
green our homes
and every family
could feed themselves.
It's an occupational hazard,
picking these,
with all the bees.
Dad used to love these.
This is Sedum,
it's a succulent actually.
We are from a little place
called Obdum,
which is about 20 minutes
north of Amsterdam,
well known for growing tulips,
and that's what my family
did there,
my grandfather,
my great grandfather,
and it's really interesting that
my dad started doing it here.
These flowers,
I use them when they're green,
I use them at this stage.
Obviously,
they're at their best right now,
but they're also
really beautiful
when they completely
darken off.
I still use them then.
And I actually suspend them,
so people walk underneath
clouds of Sedum.
I've got this from my dad,
I personally don't believe
in talking about doing stuff.
I'm a big believer
in doing stuff.
When people see a physical,
living, breathing example
of an idea,
it's much more powerful
than verbalising that idea.
There's something very powerful
about smelling it,
seeing it, hearing it,
touching it.
You walk away and it
leaves you with something
and it kind of makes you want
to change the way you live.
I'm an artist and I understand
that, if it's not desirable,
if it's not
aesthetically pleasing,
if people don't love it
and don't want it,
it won't become an idea
that's mainstream.
So, I understand it's
critical that it's appealing.
Ten years ago, florists were
not really into using natives
and now,
I think it's been really good
to have, like,
an outsider's perspective
of how incredible and beautiful
these amazing plants really are.
I think I need to put
more water in that.
Everything that we waste
in our society and
in our culture today,
to me is a resource.
My work has always been
about utilising waste,
and that led into doing
interiors of restaurants
and using wasted materials
and ultimately doing
much larger installations
again with wasted materials
and it ultimately
led to restaurants.
At the end of 2012,
I opened Silo,
which was the world's first
completely zero-waste
restaurant.
And it led to restaurants
all over the world
implementing change,
change that really saves an
unbelievable amount of waste,
even from McDonald's through to some of the
world's best restaurants.
Imagine your house growing food
on the roof, on the walls.
JEREMY McLEOD: I think
the thing about Joost
is that he's so idealistic
and he's so fearless
and it's kind of like this,
you know, crazy naivete,
you know, where he just says,
here's the vision,
and it's this
massive, bold vision,
and then he gets to work on it.
JOOST: So, I wanna prove
that we can live zero waste
and, to achieve that,
you need to solve waste
where most of it is generated
and that's our homes.
My goal is to build a house
like no-one's ever seen before,
a house that's inspired
by nature, really,
a house that doesn't
generate any waste,
is its own closed system.
To me, the rules
are really simple.
If you can't recycle it or if
it's toxic, we can't use it.
And that rules out about
95% of building materials
you can normally use.
And at the end of
the building's life,
that the whole thing can be
just be easily recycled,
composted or biodegraded.
This design, this system,
this building,
I think it could be a place
that provides us with everything
that we need if we do it right.
Let's change our urban areas,
our cities, our houses, our
buildings to food systems.
JEREMY: I think the incredible
thing about Joost
is he's a florist,
not an architect.
He thinks like an artist,
not an architect.
And so he's not
making architecture,
he's building a system
to live within.
And he calls it
future food systems.
JOOST: There's so much waste
generated by
actually getting a site
prepared for a building.
And there's so much energy
and cost
that's goes into
the foundations.
So, I started playing
around with the idea of,
what about if you build a house
that doesn't need foundations,
and you can plough that money
into a rooftop garden.
JEREMY: The way that houses
have always been
built historically
is that you put them on stumps
or on a concrete slab
on the ground.
But, for every kilogram
of concrete you make,
you make a kilogram of carbon.
The incredible thing
about the Greenhouse
is that it doesn't use
concrete footings.
Instead, it uses
soil on the roof,
to weigh the building down.
This system can be built
in a factory, taken to site,
the soil can then be loaded on,
and the building is there.
This is a great solution for
a rapidly urbanising society.
JOOST: From an engineering
point of view,
we can't start putting in
windows or cladding it
because the building
becomes like a sail
without the soil on the roof
because it's part
of the engineering.
That's why that garden
needs to go on immediately.
How amazing is that
view through there?
You get to see the MCG
and everything.
So, the soil is
going on the roof.
And... so today's
the most exciting day
of the whole project,
pretty much, for me, anyway.
And that's what
we plan to garden.
It'll grow some amazing food.
As well, the black barrels
are made from recycled plastic,
so I like using them.
So, this is a 44-gallon drum.
So, I've got this thing
about 44-gallon drums -
the last 100 years
were about oil,
the next 100 years
are about soil.
So, I call them
44-gallon soil drums.
And people say to me
all the time,
how can you have black barrels
in the middle of summer
and everything grows so well?
Because the plants constantly
have access to water.
And so you don't lose nutrients
and you don't lose water,
so the ultimate
zero-waste design.
You can see how there's
a real science to this.
Please put this
in your recycling.
It's polypropylene,
it gets recycled,
and there's a huge shortage
of it in Australia.
This goes in like that.
Basically, force this in.
You've got to make sure that
something goes all the way down
to the bottom, so that
it's always sitting in water.
And the water will wick out,
but it can't be synthetic
because it won't wick.
So if you want... let's say
you're growing watercress,
you have it all the way
up there,
you want the water
as high as possible.
And the water level doesn't
stay like that all the time,
it's just when you're watering
and then the plants
start pulling water out.
And I love that, before
we put any windows in
or any cladding on or anything,
the first thing we do
is put the soil on the roof
and put the garden up.
I dream that one day
every house is built that way.
- Yeah, that's good.
- Yep, perfect.
You can't suddenly
walk up the street
and throw a little bit
of rubbish in the bin
because once you do that
you compromise the whole idea,
and so I think you've got
to have a purist approach.
Because, once people
see you compromise,
then they compromise,
and then suddenly it becomes
a slippery slope.
All transport companies
want their pallets wrapped.
Oh, I might go on this side.
I hate wrap because
you can't recycle it,
it just ends up in the bin.
And so someone told me not
that long ago about a guy,
who is a winemaker,
he hated that his wine,
his organic wines
were getting wrapped
in this plastic
that just ended up
in landfill.
And so he invented a plastic
wrap made from food waste.
So, we get to wrap this garden
in stuff that we can then
compost which is really cool.
We don't need to be generating
any waste is my philosophy,
so there's always an
alternative, always a solution.
No, I'd rather... No.
But it starts with the soil,
it's all about the soil.
I know how good the soil is
so I know stuff will grow
really well.
I've put really coarse material,
but also really fine material,
and I can put my hand into this,
there's a scrub worm.
These can go down up to two
and a half, three metres deep.
I actually reckon this is
probably the most important
living organism on earth.
My dad used to say that lots
of worms means happy people.
I've been mucking around
with soil for about 30 years,
um, and just copying what's
in the natural environment.
I always try and have something
from the ocean in it,
so these are scallop shells
that have been ground up
and composted and, of course,
worms, you can see here.
Just a few, eh?
This is bintje,
my favourite potato.
The most success I've had
is 34 kilos of potatoes
from one square metre.
I's remarkable how much
this will yield.
And I love this because
the soil's made from waste
and the barrels
are made from waste.
You know, I think everybody
should have vertical gardens
in their house.
I think everybody should be
growing a little bit of food
even if it's a square metre.
And that's what I hope
will become normal.
Because, once you start
planting something,
and you grow something,
you're connected to the outside
world like never before
because you start worrying
about whether
it's going to rain.
Do I need to water that plant?
Have we got rain coming
tonight? I better harvest it.
Time to plant some veggies.
Suddenly, you're connected
and then that becomes
the stepping stone.
Awesome.
Whatever this tree is,
there's a deciduous tree
here that's dropping leaves
and it reminds me of
my childhood in Holland.
We must have had
a similar tree growing.
What's so exciting about today
is that everyone's holding
a phone in their hands
and everyone can
follow the project.
Have a look at this one.
That bird sounds so cool,
doesn't it?
So, as frustrating as it is
for us
to kind of be building while
these lockdowns are going on,
people sitting at home,
stuck at home were able to,
through social media,
follow the build, watch the
wicking beds being made
and the soil getting made.
Saffron cap.
This is probably
the one that's easiest
for people to identify but
it's also the most delicious.
We needed to radically change
everything before COVID
and I think that people
are more open to it now
because they've realised
that we can suddenly
stop going to work, we can
quickly change what we do.
And that fills me with hope.
This is a very, very good day.
That's it, you've just picked
the most perfect one.
Actually, I like it
when they've got little...
looks like an artwork.
So, this is the south
of the building,
that's why there's no windows,
so there's no sun.
And, yeah, we've made a ramp
so we can get disability access
and all that sort of stuff
like that,
used complete waste
for the ramp.
So, this is all form ply
that's been
used many, many times
by concreters.
You can see some of them might
have been used 15 or 20 times.
- Yeah.
- We used that form ply...
Getting things done on time
has proven to be impossible,
constant lockdowns,
and it's quite
a stressful situation,
especially because
I've got two friends
that have left their jobs
ready to move into this place.
- Yep, alright?
- Yeah.
Lean it in. Alright?
And, you know,
because of the lockdowns,
we weren't allowed to start
early, either, you know,
there were very limited hours
that we could work.
And, then, of course,
it just made it worse
so the anxiety and the costs
and the blowouts
and, you know,
all that sort of stuff.
And, really, you know,
there's only four of us
working on this
most of the time.
So, the join on the one behind
is here.
- Oh, yeah.
And so luckily for us it's only
a relatively small house.
JEREMY: Australian houses
have been getting bigger
and bigger and bigger,
so, in the last hundred years,
our houses have got four times
bigger than they used to be.
You know, these houses
are over 200 square metres.
Joost's Greenhouse is under
90 square metres,
so it's less than half the size
of that,
and the single biggest
carbon emitter on this planet
is buildings,
is the built environment.
It gives us a carbon problem
at construction,
and it gives us a carbon problem
for, you know, the operational
life of the building.
You know, it's time
that we all just, uh,
used a little less space and
build a little bit more quality.
JOOST: This is the last straw.
COLLEAGUE: This Joost at, what
is it, a quarter past seven,
more hay in his hair
than there is hair.
I love this stuff.
What can I say?
Well, I'm a bit of a sucker
for straw.
All my past projects
have used straw
just bailed the way
that farmers sell it.
But, in the new project,
I use a compressed panel that's
made in Bendigo since 1952.
This panel was very popular
in the '60s and '70s
and then it became, like,
this hippy product
and people started
designing it out.
And I'm trying to
resurrect the product
and bring it back
and make it more popular
so that every building
is made with it
because it's really
easily recycled.
And it's completely
made from waste.
So, for every kilo of oats,
rice, wheat, barley,
we produce a kilo of straw,
and there's a hundred million
farmers
that produce it every year.
more than enough material to
make all of our toilet paper,
copy paper, cardboard.
And yet we're cutting
down trees for toilet paper.
27,000 trees are cut down every
day just to make toilet paper.
And at the same time farmers
are burning straw
to get rid of it.
Private farmers are sitting
on an untapped resource,
in my opinion.
There's huge potential
industry here
to use agricultural waste
that could go into paper
and particle board.
We use straw on the walls,
there's straw on the ceiling,
so you get this
beautifully insulated wall
that is made with the material
that's most wasted on earth
and, best of all,
when it's tight and compact,
the straw in itself
is very fire resistant
which makes it
even more amazing.
And, of course,
any waste can just be
either composted or biodegraded.
- Is this barley?
JOOST: Oats.
- Oats.
A bit late
but they'll still be fine.
The most important element
in soil is air.
Soil life is no different to us,
the number one thing
that they need is air.
- Wow!
- You watch...
- It looks so healthy!
Once you've got air,
then all of the
microflora and bacteria
can thrive.
And then the goal, the magic...
And carbon, charcoal, is a
permanent home for microflora.
This is biochar and I always
mix this into the soil,
this is carbon
and it stays in the soil
for hundreds and hundreds
of years,
and just mix it all through.
RUSSELL BURNETT:
Biochar is highly porous.
Its surface area is huge.
If you've got a gram of
just ordinary biochar
from a woody material,
it will have the surface area
of a tennis court, it's huge.
And, because it's so porous,
it's like a housing complex
for soil microbes.
We'll use anything
that's basically a dry, organic
material - wood chips,
shells, nuts, grape marc,
residue from the hemp industry,
if it's a dry,
considered a waste material,
which you'd normally
burn, shred it,
put it through a continuous
pyrolysis process like this.
Beautiful, it's win-win.
JOOST: What happens
with biochar is
you're burning without oxygen,
so there's no smoke,
there's no emissions.
If you burnt it in a fire,
it would turn to ash,
and you'd lose it,
but when you're turning it
into charcoal, it's a great way
to store carbon.
We know of charcoal
that's thousands of years old
from fires from
2 or 3 thousand years ago,
so it stays in the soil
for a long time.
RUSSELL: When we make
our biochar,
we leave a few little goodies
in there.
We don't cook the crap
out of it.
It's got some of these
pyroligneous compounds,
these acids and foods for soil
microbes and plants, as well.
Once it goes in the soil
and the biology sees
this wonderful housing complex,
bingo, they explode.
- Wow.
- There you go.
- Yeah.
RUSSELL: Because it's based
around this beautiful
complex fixed carbon matrix,
it's like compost for life.
You get the same wonderful
effect you get from compost
but it's never-ending
and it just gets better.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Five, four,
three, two, one.
JOOST: Welcome to
our first livestream,
FutureFoodSystem livestream.
I'm really excited
to have Jeremy here,
who's a real architect,
unlike me,
and we're going to
take you through
all the different elements
that have made this building
what it is today.
We've got a tiny little roof
up the top,
which is... I've calculated
is enough for drinking water
for a year, so all the water
off the solar panels
on the roof will be used
for drinking and cooking
and that sort of thing
and that's what this
stainless steel tank is for.
JEREMY: So, it seems like
your whole frame is all steel,
no concrete,so I guess the goal is at
the end of all this, Joost,
that you can recycle
the entire building,
the whole frame, everything.
- Yep.
- Yep. Zero waste.
JOOST: Well, as you know,
I'm obsessed with zero waste,
so, if you can't recycle it,
I don't want it.
- Yeah.
This building, what most people
say when they walk in,
they go, "It doesn't smell
like a house at all."
And that's because we haven't
used any glues, resins,
coatings, paints,
any synthetic materials,
it's just all natural materials.
JEREMY: It smells
like Apollo Bay,
that's what it smells like.
The cypress macrocarpa.
JOOST: Well, I'm really proud
of the fact
that there's not one stick of
FSC timber in this building,
so everything's come
from a farm.
So, FSC,
it's Forest
Stewardship Council.
You'll find it on copy paper,
toilet paper, on everything
that's made from wood chips.
It's a body that was set up
to give us confidence in knowing
that it's sustainable timber.
20 years ago, Jenny, my wife,
and I went into the Amazon,
and, flying over the Amazon,
we saw the clearing and the
logging that was going on,
which was so disappointing
because we went deep
into the Amazon
and we saw how diverse
and beautiful it was.
I noticed a place
that was cutting timber
and it was obvious that
the timber came from
an old-growth forest,
and every piece of timber
had an FSC stamp on it.
And that made me think,
"Hang on,
"isn't that supposed to be
sustainable timber,
"isn't that supposed to be
coming from a non-wild source?"
So, I can't support wild forest
getting turned into FSC timber.
Everyone talks about
monoculture forest,
plantation timber.
It's clearly a beautiful setting
but this is possibly the worst
form of locking up land.
This is the most profitable
form of forestry,
planting the same species
the same distance apart,
all the same age, en masse.
What it does is it
basically wipes out
any chance of competition,
they grow really quickly,
they're really uniform,
they're all planted
the same distance apart,
they're all the same age
and there's no chance
for an understory.
You can see there's nothing
growing underneath here.
There's no plants, there's no
wildlife, there's no insects,
there's no birds, there's nothing that lives
in this monoculture.
We've walked through
an old-growth forest
and the biodiversity just
under your feet is incredible.
The amount of different species
of fungus and ferns and grasses.
None of that exists here.
In my eyes, this is dead.
There's no life here and, sadly,
this is the most common form
of forestry globally.
We don't need to be doing this,
we could be getting our timber
from farmers.
FARMER: That... I planted
that tree, this thing here.
I've harvested it,
it's all in furniture.
That was only 25 years old.
JOOST: A lot of people have
heard the term agroforestry,
and that basically means
that farmers,
who normally farm sheep or
grain or other crops,
plant trees.
And those trees are actually
planted for harvesting
but those trees also provide
shade and wind protection
for livestock
or they'll stop erosion
in waterways,
and agroforestry is
about planting trees
to stop that erosion but then,
also, ultimately, for profit
so that you do get to
harvest those trees.
It's estimated that most farms
have between 15-20%
of their land
that's unproductive
and is able to have trees.
FARMER: This is what
we got out of it.
You can see the colour
of the timber, beautiful.
JOOST: I believe that we
need to support farmers
in planting trees but don't
just pay them to plant trees,
we need to pay them ongoing
to maintain that tree
so that, over the next 10 years,
we build a really sustainable
timber industry.
We've got a huge land mass
and we've got the potential
to grow billions of trees
and create habitat and
restore the environment
at the same time.
So, it's a win-win.
Every single bit of timber
has come from a farm.
Nothing has come from
a monoculture.
Hey, Andrew,
the kitchen's too big, mate.
- Really?
Nah, it's unreal.
Unreal.
Everything was really, I
suppose, a lot more considered
and it probably wasn't as rough.
62 plus 70.
So, that'll be fine...
Like, all my other work was
made from recycled materials
so you'd bang, you know, sheets
of ply from a packing crate
from caterpillar on the wall
or, you know, everything was
made from recycled materials.
This is the first project
where everything is made
from new materials.
Because I wanted it
to be an idea
that was available
to the masses.
So, my approach was
make it from materials
that are ubiquitous,
anyone can access,
anywhere in the world,
but create a paradigm shift,
you know, the whole using straw,
not using PVC,
not using toxic glues,
not using monoculture timber.
- So I need a table that's...
- A long bench?
And because the projects
that I do are open source,
it makes it very easy
to collaborate
and people feel
really comfortable
putting their ideas forward.
- It all works.
- At least you can just put a
few other timber chopping boards
on that and use it as a... And that's always been
my approach and so it becomes
like this creative project
where it constantly evolves.
MATT STONE:
Yeah, it's all very well
to talk about
these sort of things,
but, if you can't use the
produce that we're talking
about growing sustainably,
producing sustainably,
it sort of doesn't really
back up the values
that we try to spread,
so I think it's important
to practice what we preach.
I've known Joost for
at least 10 years
since we did the
Greenhouse project in Perth,
and every restaurant-based
installation he's done
since then I've been the
foolish guy to help execute it.
Which has been a really
interesting journey
and through that time,
I think there's been
a lot of learnings,
a lot of trial and error.
JO: I like the challenge
to find something new
and, even though
we're in the world
of hospitality and cooking,
and that's what we do
on a daily basis,
I think we've come to a time,
like, a realisation for everyone
that something has to change.
MATT: We're leaving
the restaurant world
for a little bit,
I generally love it,
so I'll be back at some stage,
but we're just gonna
build this house,
getting to know
how it's all come together,
troubleshooting as we go,
then grow some food,
then move in
and just make
a modern urban cuisine
out of food that's grown on a
house in the middle of the city.
JO: I think living in it
and really figuring out how
to get it to work properly
for people is important
and we're interested
in learning, as well.
MATT: We're taking, you know,
near 20 years of
culinary experience
working across Australia
and around the world
into this tiny, little, unique
new concept.
It's not very often
you get that opportunity
as a chef to do something
that's truly new
and truly unique.
If we were asked what our
dream situation would be
in our careers, this is
pretty much it, it's exciting,
it's new, it's got meaning
and it's going to be delicious,
you know,
I'm really confident we're
gonna create some delicious food
that people will go, "Wow,"
full of flavour and delicious,
and it came from here,
this tiny little box
in the middle of, you know,
Federation Square,
like, that's just so exciting,
that's so cool.
- Alright. We'll...
We might just move this one.
JOOST: So, we've got
this insane system
that harvests fish out of
the ocean, grinds them up,
pelletises them and then sends
them all around the world
to fish farms.
That to me is beyond belief.
So, I'm a big believer
that our urban environment
can easily provide us
with more than enough fish.
So, a city like Melbourne,
I believe, could have over a
million micro aquaponic systems
producing more fish
than we can possibly eat.
- Beautiful-looking fish,
aren't they?
- Yeah.
- Oh, they look so happy.
- Yeah.
So, that's how it is,
have a look underneath there.
Beautiful blue yabbies.
The way we've set it up,
we've added another element
which is yabbies,
which sit in a separate tank
because the fish and the yabbies
will often eat each other,
so we've got them separated.
JO: You know when they came in,
and one had its arm,
like, its claw missing?
Do they become territorial?
- They do, yeah,
they're really territorial.
JO: I didn't expect to
learn as much as I have
around aquaponics.
It's something that Matt and I
have done before
but this was a lot bigger.
So, with this one, right,
in here,
so this is called
an auto siphon,
so what it does is...
Matt Stone, Matt Stone,
you should listen to this.
MATT: Yeah.
- And that air...
JOOST: Jo, she's a sponge
and, like, she doesn't sleep.
She just will Google stuff,
research stuff, buys books
and then, within a very short
time, she knows more about it
than I do. It's awesome, you know,
and that's a real joy
when you're working with
someone like that,
who's so passionate about it.
JO: I love when it's
something so simple.
Yeah, so basically fish poo
with turn into plant food.
So, this bit of rock,
compared to a bit of bluestone
or whatever that you would see,
this has got, like, ten times
the surface area.
Because it's got all those
little nooks and crannies,
those little holes, so
the bacteria live in there
and they convert the ammonia
into plant food.
All those little holes
are full of bacteria.
- So it's full of life.
- Correct, yep, exactly.
It's just living like the soil.
JO: Isn't it amazing? Like,
it's always the same concept.
No matter if it's, like,
a wicking bed or soil or...
- Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's really cool.
JOOST: The aquaponic system
is really mimicking nature.
The fish generate waste.
That waste gets fed
to the plants,
and then it also
filters the water
and cleans it out again.
That's why the plants in an
aquaponic system look so lush
and green, because the fish thrive
and make that system thrive.
But we can't have a million
micro aquaponic systems
in Melbourne if we're reliant
on ocean-harvested fish
to feed them.
We met a marine biologist
who had done a study on fish
food and she just said to me,
"I don't know if you realise
"but worms are the most
perfect food for fish,
"they contain everything
a fish needs to thrive."
And so that was a game-changer,
I just went,
well, that makes so much sense,
we just put our organic waste
that we have left over at
the end, feed it to worms,
and then we harvest the worms
and feed them to the fish.
It's the ultimate closed system.
JO: I was really looking
forward to just
launching into it,
like, moving in, cooking,
and Joost kept saying,
"We're two weeks away, we're
two weeks away moving in,"
and then it's not.
We've got beans, we've
got zucchini, rocket.
Many, many oats.
We already had started
harvesting beans
because the garden was
kinda producing food
before the house was finished.
So it's kind of frustrating,
we wanted to use that stuff.
So, you know, all these
exciting things
you just want to
take advantage of,
but it's not finished
to be able to do it.
Everything is just
Joost pioneering
and trying to do things
the correct way
and, like, who knew that
doing the correct thing
would actually be so difficult?
MATT: It was just frustrating
because we just can't get in,
so we just want to get rolling
and get cooking and
work with the space
because its's a very intimate,
small, unique space to work in
so, after cooking
in large kitchens
with a large team
for so many years,
to adapt what you think
might work and might not work.
JO: I love this.
I know, it's insane, isn't it?
JOOST: Matt and Jo
have left their jobs
so they're really reliant on
this project getting finished
and we are now at least
eight weeks behind,
and so we've decided
have it as a building site,
get some people through,
have our first event.
MATT: Sick.
WOMAN: Today still doesn't
quite feel real.
MATT: I feel nervous
for no reason,
like, I'm not cooking
or anything,
we're just using the space,
but it's the first time...
I mean, we've had
friends through and stuff
but it's the first time,
like, hospo crew are going
to see it and come through.
It's obviously
nowhere near finished.
And, like, we're funding it
all so we need to make money.
Like, if we're doing it,
you know...
It's the first time
I haven't had a full-time job
in a long time, it's scary.
We'll have power
in five minutes.
- We were, like, fully planning
to be finished and built...
- What were you doing?
- Well, we couldn't have
any builders here,
that was the problem, and all of our supplies
took forever
because no-one was working
and it's just blown out,
like, it should've
been finished ages,
like, months ago.
JOOST: I'm still hoping
to achieve being open
by the end of this year but
it's a crazy situation but yeah.
One of the things that I love
the most about the building
is that you walk in
and you can smell it,
it's a combination
of the plants growing,
the water trickling and
the fish are at the very top
and you could just smell
that ecosystem coming down
which is very reminiscent
of walking into a forest
and walking along a creek.
JO: Our solar panels
weren't connected at the time
and power was shorting out
quite often.
We thought we were on top
of everything,
and we weren't staying here,
there was no bed.
The bedrooms weren't even
finished.
So, the fish looked like
they would be OK,
the water was pumping again
and we went home.
I walked in and I could smell
there was something out of
balance, it wasn't right,
so I ran upstairs and I saw
that some fish had died.
JO: It was very emotional,
and I felt very riddled with
guilt that we had introduced
animals into this home and we'd
killed them for no reason.
And I guess part of this
project is to share
those troubles
but we weren't living here so
I don't know if we were ready.
I was very hesitant to bring
back fish so we decided
that we wouldn't do anything
for a couple of weeks
and then Joost was like,
no, we've just gotta get fish
back in here.
JOOST: It just shows that
that ecosystem
is reliant on human tenants
as much as nature is reliant
on all the different elements
that make that work.
JEREMY: So this is
your battery wall?
JOOST: Batteries are a disaster
when it comes to recycling,
they're difficult to recycle,
so I've just been researching
and researching
and then I came across
nickel ion batteries.
- So, OK, I've bought these
in a scrap metal yard,
a dollar apiece sort of thing,
brought them home, my father
used to do a bit of solar panel
installation, he didn't think
they would suit a solar panel,
so I never put solar panels in
until after he'd died
and then after he'd died,
I thought, well,
I just started doing
my own homework
and couldn't see why they
wouldn't work,
so I bought a panel.
- Yeah. And it's worked for you?
- It worked perfectly
so I thought, right,
so I just started buying more.
- Wow.
- And they were fitted to
submarines during the
Second World War.
I believe they were incredibly
expensive at the time
and that's why no-one else
could do anything with them
as far as
alternative power goes.
JOOST: Love it, it's awesome.
I just can't believe
that these batteries
are from World War 2 and
you're still using them today.
- Oh, yes.
- Oh, I reckon it's
a game-changer.
- They're very rough
and crude looking.
This is all salt building up
around the hinges,
- Yeah.
- See, there's one
that's very stiff.
- Yeah.
They've been like that for 30
years and it doesn't matter.
- That is insane.
- Yes.
- And still functioning the way
that they were
originally designed.
JOOST: The thing
that inspires me
and excites me
is this constant connection
with brilliant people.
- It's minimalist.
- Yeah.
And that's what projects
like this have always done.
- They're magnets.
- Mm.
You know, I didn't...
Most of the crazy ideas
just come about
because you're just a magnet
for a whole bunch
of crazy people.
And then you're just like,
"why don't we do it that way?"
This battery here
is 100 years old
and still works, as good
as the day that it was made.
This is a battery
that can be recycled
but it probably never will be.
Like, my grandchildren will have
these batteries in their houses.
JEREMY: Incredible.
And so tell us how
you charge these,
like, have you got solar?
- Yeah, just solar, so South
Australian-made solar panels.
- So Australian-made solar.
JEREMY: So, we've got
climate change,
we've got a warming planet,
we've also got
an urbanising planet.
The big thing is
this thing called
the urban heat island effect.
And what that means is that,
when you have lots of asphalt,
which is black,
lots of concrete,
and then the sun is
beating down on that,
it absorbs that heat
and it retains the heat.
And so, for Joost, basically,
instead of having a black roof
which absorbs heat,
he's got solar panels,
which take the sun and
converts it to electricity,
and then he's got plants,
and plants help cool the house
and plants absorb the sun
and, through photosynthesis,
turn it into food
for the occupants,
so it's a solution
that, in dense cities, we're
all going to have to look to.
JOHN FORD:
So, you've got air in.
You're gonna sort the air out,
so, as I say,
draw it from the base
'cause carbon dioxide
will sink to the bottom.
You want a continual flow, you
want moving air all the time.
I think that's the first mistake
that a lot of people make
with mushrooms because they
think they grow in caves,
they grow in the dark
with no air movement
and they do their thing,
but most of the mushrooms
don't want to do that.
They don't grow in caves,
they grow in forests
and they want to find the light,
they want to find
that fresh air, right?
So, that's where
they want to go.
So, the most... Yeah, as I say,
the two things
we're talking about today
and trying to get right is
air flow,
because we need
lots of fresh air,
and we need humidity.
Right, and so
that's the next step.
- OK, let's talk about
humidity, then.
- Absolutely, let's do it.
- Take this off.
JOHN: So, basically, this is
going to fill with water
to a certain amount and then
underneath here is a big fan,
a big plastic fan, and
a really strong motor in there.
It basically creates
a sucking action,
it sucks the water up
through here.
So, basically,
little, tiny, droplets of water
will shoot out from here.
So, the issue with it
being on the ground
is will it reach high enough
to get humidity to the top?
JO: Is that where the shower
could come into play?
- Absolutely.
JOOST: This is going to look
so cool, I can't wait.
Hey, John, do you want to put
the first mushroom in?
- Love to.
Am I in these guys' way?
White oyster, white oyster
going in, the mushroom wall.
- OK, Jo, you need to go
and have to shower
to make sure
they've got enough steam.
- Thanks, mate.
- Absolute pleasure.
I cannot wait to see
this full of mushrooms.
JOOST: Let's see how long it
takes for this one to go in.
I can't believe
they're already popping out.
- Yeah.
JEREMY: The whole goal, right,
is that you've built a house
that is essentially
food-positive,
that it's enough
for Matt and Jo
to live here, to get enough
water, to have enough energy,
to have enough food here,
and also they like entertaining
so they're going to
have friends over,
so it's actually going
to be more than enough
food for them to be able to...
- That's my goal.
- Yeah.
So, do you think that it's
going to work, like, you know?
- Yeah.
- Yeah. I think...
I wouldn't be doing it if...
I don't know how well...
Like, I'm not saying
that this...
everything we do here is the
way that it needs to be done,
I just want people
to get inspired and go,
"He's doing it like that.
"Well, what about if
we do it like that?"
I just want it to be a catalyst.
JEREMY: I've never seen a house
do what this house does.
This is... this is something
that's come from pure creation.
This has been the evolution
of 20 years of thinking
about the environment, our food
systems, our housing systems.
And, you know, he doesn't need
people to do every part of it,
they can just take the bits
that they want.
But everyone can learn
something from what he's done.
And I think that
the big thing is that
it's so ambitious and such
a simple, clear idea.
"I'm going to make a house
"that grows enough food for
the people that live there."
Like, what a simple,
beautiful idea.
JOOST: We were kind of ready
to go but we couldn't occupy
the building, so for a lot of
January it just sat there.
Uh, I probably should've
waited to install the batteries,
because nickel ion batteries
need to be used,
otherwise they go to sleep.
And once they go to sleep
you've gotta wake them back up
which can take up to six weeks.
So, delay after delay
after delay,
and we just struggled
to get them connected
and eventually
we did get them connected
but they were sitting still for
too long and not being used.
They'd gone to sleep and
we didn't have enough time
to resurrect the batteries
and charge them properly.
I've now installed another
Australian-designed battery
which doesn't have as long
a life as what nickel ion does
but it's still a brilliant
battery that they have actually
put a lot of energy into making
sure that they can be recycled.
In hindsight, we should've just
run all of the electrical
equipment, the batteries,
all of the tools should've been
charging off those batteries
so it's my fault,
I got too excited, I should've
installed them later.
JO: Welcome to
FutureFoodSystem,
this is the entry.
I thought I'd take you
on a little tour.
So this is one of two aquaponic
systems we have in the house.
Currently, we've got
golden barramundi
and regular barramundi.
That's our bedroom,
with a grow bed.
We've got plants growing in the
top, that's designed by Joost.
They're our solar panels
out there
and they wrap around the house
like that.
We'll head up to
the biggest module,
which is the kitchen
and dining room.
There's Pippies, hey, Pippy.
This is our MCG,
our cricket farm,
so we use crickets as a source
of vitamin K2 and protein.
Dog verse crickets.
Then we've got our flow hive,
our beehive,
you can just tap the honey,
so this comes up.
And then in here
we have our bees,
so there's not much honey
in there at the moment.
Finally, got the batteries
installed
that were meant to be
at Fed Square.
Pretty excited.
Just in the last two weeks,
they've really already woken up
again and fully charged,
and hopefully
these will be in our family for
quite a few generations to come.
JO: We're not serving any
guests but we're still here.
There's some more bit and bobs
from the garden.
We've harvested over 40kg
of pumpkin.
That's been pretty cool.
And there's the view
from the kitchen window.
That is a good parsnip.
Having a garden
is really important
to the way that Matt and I cook
because we just
let the garden guide
what we're actually cooking,
it's not the other way around.
It's really about
coming out here
and seeing what's growing
and what is the best
and then just picking that
and cooking something with it.
I mean, you might eat snow peas
for a week
but they're probably
the best snow peas
you're ever going to eat. And then you learn how to serve
snow peas ten different ways.
And then, the next week,
cavolo nero is ready
and then you cook cavolo nero
five different ways.
So, I feel like we're really
pushing ourselves
with our cooking.
MATT: We'll document
all our recipes as we go
and photograph as we go.
JOOST: Matt and I want to know
if anyone's got any questions.
- Ask us, food, building,
materials, whatever.
There's no hiding
any of the ideas here
with the building, with the
food, it's gotta be out there
and that's how you can inspire
people to do this stuff, really.
JOOST: So, we used 400 grams
of tiger nuts
and got a litre of milk.
Got enough for me?
Come on, mate.
- Sure.
JO: Be interesting... Oh, yeah.
Isn't that mental?
Tiger nuts! It's so cool!
So, that's two blades - one,
two, three, four, five, six.
Seven.
Mm! Tiger nut milk
and we're gonna milk it.
JOOST: Jo, what are you making?
- Tiger nut ice-cream.
It's really starchy
and really sweet,
and then this nut meal.
Use it for stuffing or put it
in the tiger nut cake
as a bit of moisture.
And then the chickens love it.
I've never used tiger nuts
before until this house.
But they have been
a real lifesaver
when you have to have something
to produce sweetness,
you know, we're not
growing any wheat,
so to use it as flour
is awesome, as well.
And I like that challenge,
the challenge
has kind of introduced me to
something that I never imagined.
And then to be making things
that are nut free, dairy free,
gluten free, sugar free, all
from this magical little tuber.
And that is the crazy tiger nut.
Like, I feel like every country
must have their version
of something like this.
For Australia,
I think it's bunya nuts.
So silky.
Liquid gold.
Mm!
Magma, yum.
I love cooking.
I love everything about it.
- Look, there's ice-cream.
- Wait, is that ice cream?
- Yeah.
- Oh! I thought...
- Look at the bowl,
it's frozen. Does
that feel cold?
- Oh!
JO: Ice-cream.
You know what blows my mind?
It's three ingredients.
That's all it is.
Double scoop.
JOOST: I was hoping to see
some babies in there today.
Jeez, look how much darker
they are.
JO: Oh, wow!
- They've got to be
close to hatching.
- Yeah. Wow.
- That's so cool.
JO: That's my finger for scale.
JOOST: We thought that this
project would be successful
through social media
but we never expected it
to be as successful.
So, we've got people all over
the world following the project.
MAN: If you told people
that mealworms eat polystyrene,
they wouldn't believe it.
JO: People don't believe it.
Oh, it's just incredible.
So much polystyrene
goes into restaurants.
JOOST: Jo posted a video,
it had 40,000 people saw it,
on mealworms.
JO: Wow! - And I think that that's what
shocked Federation Square,
as well, the reach that we have
had globally is phenomenal.
It's a little bit
like a butterfly?
- Yeah.
So then do they just fly out
of there when they're...?
- I don't know, we haven't
worked that bit out yet.
Possums or the birds?
No, I think it's possums that
have actually beaten us to it.
MATT: Had a little nibble?
JO: We are doing a dish at
the moment which is a cake,
that we're layering with apples
and its served with
a tiger nut ice-cream.
I did a video of how
to make those cakes
and surprisingly a lot of people
have sourced tiger nuts on
their own and have made them.
And, I mean, that dish
only has four ingredients
and all of the ingredients
are coming from the house -
eggs, honey, tiger nuts, apples.
It's kind of a no-brainer
that things could be that
simple but you're
not missing out.
Yeah.
MATT: This is so unique,
and it's already becoming
the catalyst for change.
WOMAN: That's pumpkins,
we've got zucchinis,
pumpkins, tomatoes in that bed,
in the middle.
We have some tall,
skinny tomatoes.
MATT: The way people are looking
at their homes, the way they eat
food, how they prepare food,
the waste that is
generated by food.
WOMAN: I have gone zero waste
at home
by doing a few simple things.
Everything gets put into
a Bokashi bin
or into the worm farm.
MATT: Nothing's too small,
I think, be it
growing some parsley
on their balconies,
but the upside of it
is it's always more delicious,
so, you know, we're proving
this is possible.
MAN: All the scraps and that
went straight in
the top of that.
MATT: If people want to
make changes at home,
just little things,
nothing is too small,
and, once you start to
do one or two things,
it just becomes infectious
and you just do the next thing
and, you know,
in a short matter of time,
you can actually be making
a big difference.
And, with some small changes,
we didn't produce any waste.
Imagine a world without waste.
JOOST: I'm walking up there,
up the stairs
and I'm looking in the sky
and I just see
these really, really big flies,
like, they're huge.
Then I ran back up the stairs
and the whole solar panel
was covered with a blanket
of dead bees.
There's no bees in there,
what the hell?
What it was is the bees
were dragging dead bees
out of the hive
and dropping them.
MATT: It's like a massacre
JOOST: I know.
We worked out somebody was
using a chemical
to get rid of a pest.
The bees had obviously...
were attracted to it,
had taken it back to the hive.
Luckily, the bees were
smart enough to work out,
don't go back to that spot,
and within a week the hive
was back to full strength.
We couldn't believe
how resilient.
Oh, I was shocked,
I really thought
that I'd lost that hive.
JOOST: Juicy, juicy,
juiciest nashis.
- Sorry, what?
- It's been a big day.
- It's been a big six months.
JO: What are you doing?
I'll get ya, I'll get ya.
JO: What are you guys
doing here?
Stunning, right?
FutureFoodSystem.
- You guys can do the mushrooms,
I'm going to do the barramundi.
JOOST: You going to go
fishing, Matt?
- Oh, I don't know if I'm
going to be able to get one.
- That's not the attitude, mate.
- It's going to be really
hard to get one, Joost.
The water's so high.
JO: Out of everything
in this house,
I think the rainbow trout
are my favourite.
They were the yabbies,
but we've been growing these
fingerlings for months now,
they were tiny,
and now they're at full size
and ready to harvest and
we actually have to harvest
before it gets too hot.
Sorry, fishy!
It's actually really hard
to catch them...
Ooh!
..using a net.
You'd think in a small container
you could just reach in and
grab 'em but they're so tricky.
- Oh! Oh, shit, sorry.
- No, that's alright.
It's hard,
we've been living with them
and we're going to
have to kill 'em,
which, yeah, I know is part of
being a chef and eating food
but it doesn't make it
any easier.
MATT: Do you want me to,
like, poke something one way,
just to get 'em
to go towards you?
- Yeah.
- Maybe I could use the Go-Pro.
If we poke them under there,
they can swim out?
- Yeah, we can do that.
Oh, it's really murky.
JO: They're so quick.
JO: Did it go in?
- Oi, beauty!
- There you go.
JO: Oh, it's slippery.
MATT: It's got a lot of fat
in it, it's really healthy.
JO: We always have the
connection with the food
of where it comes from and
that you have to kill something
if you're going to eat meat.
And when it's in your house
and they're really beautiful
and you feed them every day
or they're there,
you have to use all of it
because you're killing it.
Matt: That, that and that,
that'll be roasted for a sauce.
The guts we save up
till we've got enough
to make a batch of fish sauce,
and then, the fillets, they
could be roasted or pan seared
or baked in the oven,
however you like.
JO: To have this fish and have
to kill it, gut it, scale it
and then prepare
and then feed it to people and
I hope that they realise that,
you know, you actually go
through probably a bit of trauma
when you kill something.
- I don't know I don't have
that connection so much,
I'm more like
it wouldn't be here
without us growing it to eat,
so, I don't know, I think it
makes me much more respectful.
For sure, like,
you have to make sure
everything is being utilised,
you definitely wouldn't
waste anything, so I think
that's a really big motivator
but for me I don't have an
issue with that side of things.
- Far out.
It was just alive
six minutes ago.
- Now it's in pieces.
JO: Because we've grown the
fish, you see how much effort
goes into every part of it,
feeding them every day
and making sure
the water's clean.
It's got, like, really nice fat
around its stomach.
- It's really healthy.
- Then, when we go to use it,
really give justice to the whole
animal and not waste anything.
Like the swim bladder,
so we can clean it up,
dry it and then deep fry it
and get a cracker.
And then same with the eyes,
you can make
crackers out of those,
as well, the skin, as well.
And then the bones
will go into compost,
which then goes
back into the soil
so it's just a complete
closed loop.
Things like organic waste
and water
and cardboard and
all these things
actually get used on site.
So, this system, this building,
uses all those materials
as a valuable resource
and recombines it
back into the building.
So, cardboard gets ground up
and turned into food
for mycelium,
then we harvest the mushrooms
and then
that compost that's generated
by the mushrooms
then goes back into the
gardens, and things like
organic waste goes
into a biodigester,
like a big stomach.
So, we inoculate this tank
with cow manure.
JO: I thought you were going
to put your hand in there.
Oh!
JOOST: Hang on, I just washed
this shirt.
Put your flowers in there.
Done.
JO: And then that just
goes into the base?
JOOST: Yeah, the bacteria
from the cow's stomach
will break down
all of our organic waste
and turn it into gas
and amazing fertiliser.
MATT: We're still
kind of measuring
how much we get out of it
but, um,
you know, we don't have
that much waste
but, when it breaks down
and when the gas is created,
it's actually quite a lot.
So, there's I think maybe
four hours a day, at least,
of cooking gas coming from this.
So, just add a little bit, poke
it in, add another little bit.
JEREMY: I was struggling with
the aesthetic of the biodigester
to be totally honest,
how do I get clients
to engage with human
waste as a resource, as well as
their food waste as a resource?
I think that sort of technology
in an urban environment
should be handled at a civic
scale, at a grid scale,
but I think it's incredible
and I think it's great
in remote locations.
So, there's been
lots of action here
but no-one, really,
in the house to enjoy it,
so it's just been us, so it's been very quiet
for the last six,
what is it now,
three months almost, longer?
- Yeah, three months.
Yeah, so we're pretty excited to
get some people into the house.
And the garden's out of control
so it's perfect.
Dumplings and fish
are both downstairs,
so we need to check them.
JO: It's been funny because
we've only ever really been
in the kitchen and now doing
all front-of-house stuff,
getting all the plates ready and
polishing cutlery and glasses.
This is the beauty about having
solar panels on the ground.
JOOST: If you, at the start of
this project said to someone,
"Look, I think we can grow food
where we live,"
everyone would assume
it's a salad.
"Do I eat a salad for
breakfast, lunch and dinner?"
And what we've proven is
the food that we've generated
over the last six months,
the diversity and difference
and it's all delicious, as well.
LOU: The crickets will be out
soon, we'll fry some up.
But we're going to
season the crickets
with the cricket salt, as well.
- Imagine it like a dukkah.
- Yeah, pretty much.
- So, you would put nuts and
different things in a dukkah,
but we're doing different seeds
and different crickets.
Bit nervous, we haven't
cooked for anyone in so long.
LOU: Kind of looks like
a garlic salt,
about a quarter roast cricket.
JO: Smells a bit like
ginger beer to me.
Can you smell it? Smell-evision.
LOU: Has a pretty nice pop.
JO: It's like having
people over for dinner,
so it's not, like,
a typical dining experience.
So, it's just... Like you would
have a dinner party at home,
it's just having people over
for dinner.
The only difference is we
just don't know who's coming.
Hello.
- Hi.
- Welcome.
- Hello!
- G'day.
- I'm Jo.
- G'day, Jo.
Come on in.
Yeah. Cheers.
- It smells so...
Cheers. And feel free
to wander up.
So, the water from the fish
tanks cycles across the growbeds
and then we've got
sweet potatoes and snow peas.
- Ah, hello.
- How are you?
Welcome. Hello.
MATT: Alrighty, everyone,
welcome to lunch.
So, there's some
different shoots,
some different veggies.
Everything you can see
is completely edible,
the flowers and even
the crickets on top.
So there's some fried crickets
in there.
It's very casual, it's like
dinner at home, right?
And the idea is to
just grab some leaves,
put it through the dip and
just eat it with your hands.
- Lovely.
- Cool, thank you.
- Try the cricket.
Yeah.
- Beautiful.
- How's your cricket?
The next little bite we have
is a cannoli that's filled
with smoked and cured trout,
rainbow trout
that is growing up here.
It's encased in
a sorghum tostada,
so similar to making a corn
chip but we made
it with sorghum,
which is a grain
that we've grown here.
- Bon appetit.
- Thank you.
JO: These are cured,
then smoked egg yolks.
And then we dry them
and then we grate them.
MATT: Sorry to interrupt
again, guys.
We have a kind of pasta
that's not pasta.
It's made from celeriac we've
just really lightly blanched.
It's like a gluten-free,
dairy-free carbonara, kind of.
Mm!
- Looks delish! Thank you.
It's fun to be cooking again
and running around,
and feel like we
have a bit of a meaning.
I think the guests have got
into it, they ate the crickets
and had some things that are
familiar and not familiar
and mixed it up.
JO: Yeah, not being able
to cook for people
has been hard and
not having people
being able to go out and dine,
so I think there's a really
nice feeling in the air
that finally we can
be around each other.
Yeah, really nice.
Kind of worried that we
couldn't remember how to cook,
but clearly that's not a thing.
JOOST: That's called recycling.
Bring your own bucket.
MATT: Something like this
is so special,
to put it into a public space,
to share it with people
is really important.
JOOST: So, there's huge
potential for us to turn
our urban areas into the most
biodiverse places on earth,
which they already are,
but what about if we
actually grow food?
Hi! It's Yvie Jones
from Studio 10.
JO: Straight lines, Costa.
I would blanch them, definitely,
and I would not have them
squeaky.
- OK.
A lot of our colleagues
are saying
it must be so nice to only
cook for 14 people a night
and it is,
but we're also
picking the vegetables,
trying to preserve them,
managing all of
the fermentations, the sauces,
the pastes, all of that flavour,
you know, important stuff.
Wow. It smells amazing. There's
so much flavour in there.
JO: It's a multi-course dinner,
so we're cooking, serving,
washing the dishes.
Usually by 10:30,
we've finished cooking food.
- And then clean up again.
- And then we clean up.
Vacuum, mop, finish the dishes
and then we're
usually in bed by 1,
1:30, and then do it again.
MATT: But, you know,
Joost reminds me all the time,
like, there's nothing like this,
it's never been done and, if
we don't do it, no-one will.
JO: It's very fulfilling,
being here.
Beans galore.
Being a part of a system that
you know is reliant on you,
and you're giving back to it
and it gives to you,
and being able to cook and
be a part of that, as well,
so you kind of close the loop
by showing that thing respect,
as well,
so it's a very fulfilling
project.
JOOST: I view the building
like a dandelion.
We've planted a dandelion
and, when it flowers,
its seeds go everywhere.
That's how I see it.
JOOST: Yeah, so I'm still
a little bit in shock,
but I'm also excited
because I've just been asked to
design a zero-waste supermarket
that implements
many of the ideas
that FutureFoodSystem is about.
Where's Sam? This could be catalyst for
change in the whole country.
Tree-free packaging and no
plastic and reusable containers.
So it's pretty exciting,
I can't believe that
this has happened.
I love the idea
that a supermarket could
be completely zero waste.
So, the organic waste
that we generate
will get fed into
a biodigester,
and then the biodigester will
create heat and energy and gas,
and from that gas we use that
for hot water,
but, also, we'll have every
second pane of glass on the roof
will be a solar panel.
So, the idea is that
it's a productive building,
but on a massive scale, it's
actually like a large version
of FutureFoodSystem really,
it's a Greenhouse
on a massive scale.
So, every single element
allows for the production
of food, but also for the
utilisation of waste on site.
And so everything
is designed to be
a circular system
and then, all the packaging,
so we'll have a washing plant
on site, so people can bring
their packaging back
to the supermarket
and it'll get reused.
There's no stickers on jars,
there's no stickers on fruit,
there's no stickers
on vegetables,
because they are the
enemy of recycling.
So, the rooftop garden,
so, as you're walking
up the aisles,
you'll actually look up
and see the plants growing
above the aisle,
so it'll be
a double-storey glasshouse
which allows you to have
productivity above,
but it also shades the
glasshouse underneath,
so we'll be able to create
a really amazing environment
for people walking
in the supermarket,
it's like a natural
air conditioner.
It'll use a lot less energy than
a conventional supermarket.
I'm a big believer in that
a vision can be realised.
I think, if you can think it,
you can realise it.
It's not easy
but I think you can do it.
It's not a compromise
to do things sustainably,
we can do everything
that we want
and have a much better life.
It doesn't matter how big
the dream
is, you can actually
make it real.
And that's really what
Greenhouse is about.
Captioned by Ai-Media
ai-media.tv
JOOST BAKKER: The most
destructive thing
we humans do is eat...
..which is madness.
And it's because we've
got this stupid system
that doesn't
respect and value waste.
We've spent the last
hundred years
removing ourselves
from our food system
and I think we need to spend
the next hundred years
living in our food system
like we've done
for millions of years.
The World Bank say
that between 30 and 40% of the
food that's actually grown today
is wasted.
Nature doesn't have waste.
A tree that falls down
in this forest,
it actually creates
all these resources
for so many other species
to get started again.
It's a perfect example
of a closed loop system.
I don't see why a house should
be any different to this.
I've always had this dream
that our homes
can be a place that provides us
with everything that we need.
Imagine if our houses
grew our food.
Imagine our cities as
ecosystems feeding themselves.
Imagine if we could
green our homes
and every family
could feed themselves.
It's an occupational hazard,
picking these,
with all the bees.
Dad used to love these.
This is Sedum,
it's a succulent actually.
We are from a little place
called Obdum,
which is about 20 minutes
north of Amsterdam,
well known for growing tulips,
and that's what my family
did there,
my grandfather,
my great grandfather,
and it's really interesting that
my dad started doing it here.
These flowers,
I use them when they're green,
I use them at this stage.
Obviously,
they're at their best right now,
but they're also
really beautiful
when they completely
darken off.
I still use them then.
And I actually suspend them,
so people walk underneath
clouds of Sedum.
I've got this from my dad,
I personally don't believe
in talking about doing stuff.
I'm a big believer
in doing stuff.
When people see a physical,
living, breathing example
of an idea,
it's much more powerful
than verbalising that idea.
There's something very powerful
about smelling it,
seeing it, hearing it,
touching it.
You walk away and it
leaves you with something
and it kind of makes you want
to change the way you live.
I'm an artist and I understand
that, if it's not desirable,
if it's not
aesthetically pleasing,
if people don't love it
and don't want it,
it won't become an idea
that's mainstream.
So, I understand it's
critical that it's appealing.
Ten years ago, florists were
not really into using natives
and now,
I think it's been really good
to have, like,
an outsider's perspective
of how incredible and beautiful
these amazing plants really are.
I think I need to put
more water in that.
Everything that we waste
in our society and
in our culture today,
to me is a resource.
My work has always been
about utilising waste,
and that led into doing
interiors of restaurants
and using wasted materials
and ultimately doing
much larger installations
again with wasted materials
and it ultimately
led to restaurants.
At the end of 2012,
I opened Silo,
which was the world's first
completely zero-waste
restaurant.
And it led to restaurants
all over the world
implementing change,
change that really saves an
unbelievable amount of waste,
even from McDonald's through to some of the
world's best restaurants.
Imagine your house growing food
on the roof, on the walls.
JEREMY McLEOD: I think
the thing about Joost
is that he's so idealistic
and he's so fearless
and it's kind of like this,
you know, crazy naivete,
you know, where he just says,
here's the vision,
and it's this
massive, bold vision,
and then he gets to work on it.
JOOST: So, I wanna prove
that we can live zero waste
and, to achieve that,
you need to solve waste
where most of it is generated
and that's our homes.
My goal is to build a house
like no-one's ever seen before,
a house that's inspired
by nature, really,
a house that doesn't
generate any waste,
is its own closed system.
To me, the rules
are really simple.
If you can't recycle it or if
it's toxic, we can't use it.
And that rules out about
95% of building materials
you can normally use.
And at the end of
the building's life,
that the whole thing can be
just be easily recycled,
composted or biodegraded.
This design, this system,
this building,
I think it could be a place
that provides us with everything
that we need if we do it right.
Let's change our urban areas,
our cities, our houses, our
buildings to food systems.
JEREMY: I think the incredible
thing about Joost
is he's a florist,
not an architect.
He thinks like an artist,
not an architect.
And so he's not
making architecture,
he's building a system
to live within.
And he calls it
future food systems.
JOOST: There's so much waste
generated by
actually getting a site
prepared for a building.
And there's so much energy
and cost
that's goes into
the foundations.
So, I started playing
around with the idea of,
what about if you build a house
that doesn't need foundations,
and you can plough that money
into a rooftop garden.
JEREMY: The way that houses
have always been
built historically
is that you put them on stumps
or on a concrete slab
on the ground.
But, for every kilogram
of concrete you make,
you make a kilogram of carbon.
The incredible thing
about the Greenhouse
is that it doesn't use
concrete footings.
Instead, it uses
soil on the roof,
to weigh the building down.
This system can be built
in a factory, taken to site,
the soil can then be loaded on,
and the building is there.
This is a great solution for
a rapidly urbanising society.
JOOST: From an engineering
point of view,
we can't start putting in
windows or cladding it
because the building
becomes like a sail
without the soil on the roof
because it's part
of the engineering.
That's why that garden
needs to go on immediately.
How amazing is that
view through there?
You get to see the MCG
and everything.
So, the soil is
going on the roof.
And... so today's
the most exciting day
of the whole project,
pretty much, for me, anyway.
And that's what
we plan to garden.
It'll grow some amazing food.
As well, the black barrels
are made from recycled plastic,
so I like using them.
So, this is a 44-gallon drum.
So, I've got this thing
about 44-gallon drums -
the last 100 years
were about oil,
the next 100 years
are about soil.
So, I call them
44-gallon soil drums.
And people say to me
all the time,
how can you have black barrels
in the middle of summer
and everything grows so well?
Because the plants constantly
have access to water.
And so you don't lose nutrients
and you don't lose water,
so the ultimate
zero-waste design.
You can see how there's
a real science to this.
Please put this
in your recycling.
It's polypropylene,
it gets recycled,
and there's a huge shortage
of it in Australia.
This goes in like that.
Basically, force this in.
You've got to make sure that
something goes all the way down
to the bottom, so that
it's always sitting in water.
And the water will wick out,
but it can't be synthetic
because it won't wick.
So if you want... let's say
you're growing watercress,
you have it all the way
up there,
you want the water
as high as possible.
And the water level doesn't
stay like that all the time,
it's just when you're watering
and then the plants
start pulling water out.
And I love that, before
we put any windows in
or any cladding on or anything,
the first thing we do
is put the soil on the roof
and put the garden up.
I dream that one day
every house is built that way.
- Yeah, that's good.
- Yep, perfect.
You can't suddenly
walk up the street
and throw a little bit
of rubbish in the bin
because once you do that
you compromise the whole idea,
and so I think you've got
to have a purist approach.
Because, once people
see you compromise,
then they compromise,
and then suddenly it becomes
a slippery slope.
All transport companies
want their pallets wrapped.
Oh, I might go on this side.
I hate wrap because
you can't recycle it,
it just ends up in the bin.
And so someone told me not
that long ago about a guy,
who is a winemaker,
he hated that his wine,
his organic wines
were getting wrapped
in this plastic
that just ended up
in landfill.
And so he invented a plastic
wrap made from food waste.
So, we get to wrap this garden
in stuff that we can then
compost which is really cool.
We don't need to be generating
any waste is my philosophy,
so there's always an
alternative, always a solution.
No, I'd rather... No.
But it starts with the soil,
it's all about the soil.
I know how good the soil is
so I know stuff will grow
really well.
I've put really coarse material,
but also really fine material,
and I can put my hand into this,
there's a scrub worm.
These can go down up to two
and a half, three metres deep.
I actually reckon this is
probably the most important
living organism on earth.
My dad used to say that lots
of worms means happy people.
I've been mucking around
with soil for about 30 years,
um, and just copying what's
in the natural environment.
I always try and have something
from the ocean in it,
so these are scallop shells
that have been ground up
and composted and, of course,
worms, you can see here.
Just a few, eh?
This is bintje,
my favourite potato.
The most success I've had
is 34 kilos of potatoes
from one square metre.
I's remarkable how much
this will yield.
And I love this because
the soil's made from waste
and the barrels
are made from waste.
You know, I think everybody
should have vertical gardens
in their house.
I think everybody should be
growing a little bit of food
even if it's a square metre.
And that's what I hope
will become normal.
Because, once you start
planting something,
and you grow something,
you're connected to the outside
world like never before
because you start worrying
about whether
it's going to rain.
Do I need to water that plant?
Have we got rain coming
tonight? I better harvest it.
Time to plant some veggies.
Suddenly, you're connected
and then that becomes
the stepping stone.
Awesome.
Whatever this tree is,
there's a deciduous tree
here that's dropping leaves
and it reminds me of
my childhood in Holland.
We must have had
a similar tree growing.
What's so exciting about today
is that everyone's holding
a phone in their hands
and everyone can
follow the project.
Have a look at this one.
That bird sounds so cool,
doesn't it?
So, as frustrating as it is
for us
to kind of be building while
these lockdowns are going on,
people sitting at home,
stuck at home were able to,
through social media,
follow the build, watch the
wicking beds being made
and the soil getting made.
Saffron cap.
This is probably
the one that's easiest
for people to identify but
it's also the most delicious.
We needed to radically change
everything before COVID
and I think that people
are more open to it now
because they've realised
that we can suddenly
stop going to work, we can
quickly change what we do.
And that fills me with hope.
This is a very, very good day.
That's it, you've just picked
the most perfect one.
Actually, I like it
when they've got little...
looks like an artwork.
So, this is the south
of the building,
that's why there's no windows,
so there's no sun.
And, yeah, we've made a ramp
so we can get disability access
and all that sort of stuff
like that,
used complete waste
for the ramp.
So, this is all form ply
that's been
used many, many times
by concreters.
You can see some of them might
have been used 15 or 20 times.
- Yeah.
- We used that form ply...
Getting things done on time
has proven to be impossible,
constant lockdowns,
and it's quite
a stressful situation,
especially because
I've got two friends
that have left their jobs
ready to move into this place.
- Yep, alright?
- Yeah.
Lean it in. Alright?
And, you know,
because of the lockdowns,
we weren't allowed to start
early, either, you know,
there were very limited hours
that we could work.
And, then, of course,
it just made it worse
so the anxiety and the costs
and the blowouts
and, you know,
all that sort of stuff.
And, really, you know,
there's only four of us
working on this
most of the time.
So, the join on the one behind
is here.
- Oh, yeah.
And so luckily for us it's only
a relatively small house.
JEREMY: Australian houses
have been getting bigger
and bigger and bigger,
so, in the last hundred years,
our houses have got four times
bigger than they used to be.
You know, these houses
are over 200 square metres.
Joost's Greenhouse is under
90 square metres,
so it's less than half the size
of that,
and the single biggest
carbon emitter on this planet
is buildings,
is the built environment.
It gives us a carbon problem
at construction,
and it gives us a carbon problem
for, you know, the operational
life of the building.
You know, it's time
that we all just, uh,
used a little less space and
build a little bit more quality.
JOOST: This is the last straw.
COLLEAGUE: This Joost at, what
is it, a quarter past seven,
more hay in his hair
than there is hair.
I love this stuff.
What can I say?
Well, I'm a bit of a sucker
for straw.
All my past projects
have used straw
just bailed the way
that farmers sell it.
But, in the new project,
I use a compressed panel that's
made in Bendigo since 1952.
This panel was very popular
in the '60s and '70s
and then it became, like,
this hippy product
and people started
designing it out.
And I'm trying to
resurrect the product
and bring it back
and make it more popular
so that every building
is made with it
because it's really
easily recycled.
And it's completely
made from waste.
So, for every kilo of oats,
rice, wheat, barley,
we produce a kilo of straw,
and there's a hundred million
farmers
that produce it every year.
more than enough material to
make all of our toilet paper,
copy paper, cardboard.
And yet we're cutting
down trees for toilet paper.
27,000 trees are cut down every
day just to make toilet paper.
And at the same time farmers
are burning straw
to get rid of it.
Private farmers are sitting
on an untapped resource,
in my opinion.
There's huge potential
industry here
to use agricultural waste
that could go into paper
and particle board.
We use straw on the walls,
there's straw on the ceiling,
so you get this
beautifully insulated wall
that is made with the material
that's most wasted on earth
and, best of all,
when it's tight and compact,
the straw in itself
is very fire resistant
which makes it
even more amazing.
And, of course,
any waste can just be
either composted or biodegraded.
- Is this barley?
JOOST: Oats.
- Oats.
A bit late
but they'll still be fine.
The most important element
in soil is air.
Soil life is no different to us,
the number one thing
that they need is air.
- Wow!
- You watch...
- It looks so healthy!
Once you've got air,
then all of the
microflora and bacteria
can thrive.
And then the goal, the magic...
And carbon, charcoal, is a
permanent home for microflora.
This is biochar and I always
mix this into the soil,
this is carbon
and it stays in the soil
for hundreds and hundreds
of years,
and just mix it all through.
RUSSELL BURNETT:
Biochar is highly porous.
Its surface area is huge.
If you've got a gram of
just ordinary biochar
from a woody material,
it will have the surface area
of a tennis court, it's huge.
And, because it's so porous,
it's like a housing complex
for soil microbes.
We'll use anything
that's basically a dry, organic
material - wood chips,
shells, nuts, grape marc,
residue from the hemp industry,
if it's a dry,
considered a waste material,
which you'd normally
burn, shred it,
put it through a continuous
pyrolysis process like this.
Beautiful, it's win-win.
JOOST: What happens
with biochar is
you're burning without oxygen,
so there's no smoke,
there's no emissions.
If you burnt it in a fire,
it would turn to ash,
and you'd lose it,
but when you're turning it
into charcoal, it's a great way
to store carbon.
We know of charcoal
that's thousands of years old
from fires from
2 or 3 thousand years ago,
so it stays in the soil
for a long time.
RUSSELL: When we make
our biochar,
we leave a few little goodies
in there.
We don't cook the crap
out of it.
It's got some of these
pyroligneous compounds,
these acids and foods for soil
microbes and plants, as well.
Once it goes in the soil
and the biology sees
this wonderful housing complex,
bingo, they explode.
- Wow.
- There you go.
- Yeah.
RUSSELL: Because it's based
around this beautiful
complex fixed carbon matrix,
it's like compost for life.
You get the same wonderful
effect you get from compost
but it's never-ending
and it just gets better.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Five, four,
three, two, one.
JOOST: Welcome to
our first livestream,
FutureFoodSystem livestream.
I'm really excited
to have Jeremy here,
who's a real architect,
unlike me,
and we're going to
take you through
all the different elements
that have made this building
what it is today.
We've got a tiny little roof
up the top,
which is... I've calculated
is enough for drinking water
for a year, so all the water
off the solar panels
on the roof will be used
for drinking and cooking
and that sort of thing
and that's what this
stainless steel tank is for.
JEREMY: So, it seems like
your whole frame is all steel,
no concrete,so I guess the goal is at
the end of all this, Joost,
that you can recycle
the entire building,
the whole frame, everything.
- Yep.
- Yep. Zero waste.
JOOST: Well, as you know,
I'm obsessed with zero waste,
so, if you can't recycle it,
I don't want it.
- Yeah.
This building, what most people
say when they walk in,
they go, "It doesn't smell
like a house at all."
And that's because we haven't
used any glues, resins,
coatings, paints,
any synthetic materials,
it's just all natural materials.
JEREMY: It smells
like Apollo Bay,
that's what it smells like.
The cypress macrocarpa.
JOOST: Well, I'm really proud
of the fact
that there's not one stick of
FSC timber in this building,
so everything's come
from a farm.
So, FSC,
it's Forest
Stewardship Council.
You'll find it on copy paper,
toilet paper, on everything
that's made from wood chips.
It's a body that was set up
to give us confidence in knowing
that it's sustainable timber.
20 years ago, Jenny, my wife,
and I went into the Amazon,
and, flying over the Amazon,
we saw the clearing and the
logging that was going on,
which was so disappointing
because we went deep
into the Amazon
and we saw how diverse
and beautiful it was.
I noticed a place
that was cutting timber
and it was obvious that
the timber came from
an old-growth forest,
and every piece of timber
had an FSC stamp on it.
And that made me think,
"Hang on,
"isn't that supposed to be
sustainable timber,
"isn't that supposed to be
coming from a non-wild source?"
So, I can't support wild forest
getting turned into FSC timber.
Everyone talks about
monoculture forest,
plantation timber.
It's clearly a beautiful setting
but this is possibly the worst
form of locking up land.
This is the most profitable
form of forestry,
planting the same species
the same distance apart,
all the same age, en masse.
What it does is it
basically wipes out
any chance of competition,
they grow really quickly,
they're really uniform,
they're all planted
the same distance apart,
they're all the same age
and there's no chance
for an understory.
You can see there's nothing
growing underneath here.
There's no plants, there's no
wildlife, there's no insects,
there's no birds, there's nothing that lives
in this monoculture.
We've walked through
an old-growth forest
and the biodiversity just
under your feet is incredible.
The amount of different species
of fungus and ferns and grasses.
None of that exists here.
In my eyes, this is dead.
There's no life here and, sadly,
this is the most common form
of forestry globally.
We don't need to be doing this,
we could be getting our timber
from farmers.
FARMER: That... I planted
that tree, this thing here.
I've harvested it,
it's all in furniture.
That was only 25 years old.
JOOST: A lot of people have
heard the term agroforestry,
and that basically means
that farmers,
who normally farm sheep or
grain or other crops,
plant trees.
And those trees are actually
planted for harvesting
but those trees also provide
shade and wind protection
for livestock
or they'll stop erosion
in waterways,
and agroforestry is
about planting trees
to stop that erosion but then,
also, ultimately, for profit
so that you do get to
harvest those trees.
It's estimated that most farms
have between 15-20%
of their land
that's unproductive
and is able to have trees.
FARMER: This is what
we got out of it.
You can see the colour
of the timber, beautiful.
JOOST: I believe that we
need to support farmers
in planting trees but don't
just pay them to plant trees,
we need to pay them ongoing
to maintain that tree
so that, over the next 10 years,
we build a really sustainable
timber industry.
We've got a huge land mass
and we've got the potential
to grow billions of trees
and create habitat and
restore the environment
at the same time.
So, it's a win-win.
Every single bit of timber
has come from a farm.
Nothing has come from
a monoculture.
Hey, Andrew,
the kitchen's too big, mate.
- Really?
Nah, it's unreal.
Unreal.
Everything was really, I
suppose, a lot more considered
and it probably wasn't as rough.
62 plus 70.
So, that'll be fine...
Like, all my other work was
made from recycled materials
so you'd bang, you know, sheets
of ply from a packing crate
from caterpillar on the wall
or, you know, everything was
made from recycled materials.
This is the first project
where everything is made
from new materials.
Because I wanted it
to be an idea
that was available
to the masses.
So, my approach was
make it from materials
that are ubiquitous,
anyone can access,
anywhere in the world,
but create a paradigm shift,
you know, the whole using straw,
not using PVC,
not using toxic glues,
not using monoculture timber.
- So I need a table that's...
- A long bench?
And because the projects
that I do are open source,
it makes it very easy
to collaborate
and people feel
really comfortable
putting their ideas forward.
- It all works.
- At least you can just put a
few other timber chopping boards
on that and use it as a... And that's always been
my approach and so it becomes
like this creative project
where it constantly evolves.
MATT STONE:
Yeah, it's all very well
to talk about
these sort of things,
but, if you can't use the
produce that we're talking
about growing sustainably,
producing sustainably,
it sort of doesn't really
back up the values
that we try to spread,
so I think it's important
to practice what we preach.
I've known Joost for
at least 10 years
since we did the
Greenhouse project in Perth,
and every restaurant-based
installation he's done
since then I've been the
foolish guy to help execute it.
Which has been a really
interesting journey
and through that time,
I think there's been
a lot of learnings,
a lot of trial and error.
JO: I like the challenge
to find something new
and, even though
we're in the world
of hospitality and cooking,
and that's what we do
on a daily basis,
I think we've come to a time,
like, a realisation for everyone
that something has to change.
MATT: We're leaving
the restaurant world
for a little bit,
I generally love it,
so I'll be back at some stage,
but we're just gonna
build this house,
getting to know
how it's all come together,
troubleshooting as we go,
then grow some food,
then move in
and just make
a modern urban cuisine
out of food that's grown on a
house in the middle of the city.
JO: I think living in it
and really figuring out how
to get it to work properly
for people is important
and we're interested
in learning, as well.
MATT: We're taking, you know,
near 20 years of
culinary experience
working across Australia
and around the world
into this tiny, little, unique
new concept.
It's not very often
you get that opportunity
as a chef to do something
that's truly new
and truly unique.
If we were asked what our
dream situation would be
in our careers, this is
pretty much it, it's exciting,
it's new, it's got meaning
and it's going to be delicious,
you know,
I'm really confident we're
gonna create some delicious food
that people will go, "Wow,"
full of flavour and delicious,
and it came from here,
this tiny little box
in the middle of, you know,
Federation Square,
like, that's just so exciting,
that's so cool.
- Alright. We'll...
We might just move this one.
JOOST: So, we've got
this insane system
that harvests fish out of
the ocean, grinds them up,
pelletises them and then sends
them all around the world
to fish farms.
That to me is beyond belief.
So, I'm a big believer
that our urban environment
can easily provide us
with more than enough fish.
So, a city like Melbourne,
I believe, could have over a
million micro aquaponic systems
producing more fish
than we can possibly eat.
- Beautiful-looking fish,
aren't they?
- Yeah.
- Oh, they look so happy.
- Yeah.
So, that's how it is,
have a look underneath there.
Beautiful blue yabbies.
The way we've set it up,
we've added another element
which is yabbies,
which sit in a separate tank
because the fish and the yabbies
will often eat each other,
so we've got them separated.
JO: You know when they came in,
and one had its arm,
like, its claw missing?
Do they become territorial?
- They do, yeah,
they're really territorial.
JO: I didn't expect to
learn as much as I have
around aquaponics.
It's something that Matt and I
have done before
but this was a lot bigger.
So, with this one, right,
in here,
so this is called
an auto siphon,
so what it does is...
Matt Stone, Matt Stone,
you should listen to this.
MATT: Yeah.
- And that air...
JOOST: Jo, she's a sponge
and, like, she doesn't sleep.
She just will Google stuff,
research stuff, buys books
and then, within a very short
time, she knows more about it
than I do. It's awesome, you know,
and that's a real joy
when you're working with
someone like that,
who's so passionate about it.
JO: I love when it's
something so simple.
Yeah, so basically fish poo
with turn into plant food.
So, this bit of rock,
compared to a bit of bluestone
or whatever that you would see,
this has got, like, ten times
the surface area.
Because it's got all those
little nooks and crannies,
those little holes, so
the bacteria live in there
and they convert the ammonia
into plant food.
All those little holes
are full of bacteria.
- So it's full of life.
- Correct, yep, exactly.
It's just living like the soil.
JO: Isn't it amazing? Like,
it's always the same concept.
No matter if it's, like,
a wicking bed or soil or...
- Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's really cool.
JOOST: The aquaponic system
is really mimicking nature.
The fish generate waste.
That waste gets fed
to the plants,
and then it also
filters the water
and cleans it out again.
That's why the plants in an
aquaponic system look so lush
and green, because the fish thrive
and make that system thrive.
But we can't have a million
micro aquaponic systems
in Melbourne if we're reliant
on ocean-harvested fish
to feed them.
We met a marine biologist
who had done a study on fish
food and she just said to me,
"I don't know if you realise
"but worms are the most
perfect food for fish,
"they contain everything
a fish needs to thrive."
And so that was a game-changer,
I just went,
well, that makes so much sense,
we just put our organic waste
that we have left over at
the end, feed it to worms,
and then we harvest the worms
and feed them to the fish.
It's the ultimate closed system.
JO: I was really looking
forward to just
launching into it,
like, moving in, cooking,
and Joost kept saying,
"We're two weeks away, we're
two weeks away moving in,"
and then it's not.
We've got beans, we've
got zucchini, rocket.
Many, many oats.
We already had started
harvesting beans
because the garden was
kinda producing food
before the house was finished.
So it's kind of frustrating,
we wanted to use that stuff.
So, you know, all these
exciting things
you just want to
take advantage of,
but it's not finished
to be able to do it.
Everything is just
Joost pioneering
and trying to do things
the correct way
and, like, who knew that
doing the correct thing
would actually be so difficult?
MATT: It was just frustrating
because we just can't get in,
so we just want to get rolling
and get cooking and
work with the space
because its's a very intimate,
small, unique space to work in
so, after cooking
in large kitchens
with a large team
for so many years,
to adapt what you think
might work and might not work.
JO: I love this.
I know, it's insane, isn't it?
JOOST: Matt and Jo
have left their jobs
so they're really reliant on
this project getting finished
and we are now at least
eight weeks behind,
and so we've decided
have it as a building site,
get some people through,
have our first event.
MATT: Sick.
WOMAN: Today still doesn't
quite feel real.
MATT: I feel nervous
for no reason,
like, I'm not cooking
or anything,
we're just using the space,
but it's the first time...
I mean, we've had
friends through and stuff
but it's the first time,
like, hospo crew are going
to see it and come through.
It's obviously
nowhere near finished.
And, like, we're funding it
all so we need to make money.
Like, if we're doing it,
you know...
It's the first time
I haven't had a full-time job
in a long time, it's scary.
We'll have power
in five minutes.
- We were, like, fully planning
to be finished and built...
- What were you doing?
- Well, we couldn't have
any builders here,
that was the problem, and all of our supplies
took forever
because no-one was working
and it's just blown out,
like, it should've
been finished ages,
like, months ago.
JOOST: I'm still hoping
to achieve being open
by the end of this year but
it's a crazy situation but yeah.
One of the things that I love
the most about the building
is that you walk in
and you can smell it,
it's a combination
of the plants growing,
the water trickling and
the fish are at the very top
and you could just smell
that ecosystem coming down
which is very reminiscent
of walking into a forest
and walking along a creek.
JO: Our solar panels
weren't connected at the time
and power was shorting out
quite often.
We thought we were on top
of everything,
and we weren't staying here,
there was no bed.
The bedrooms weren't even
finished.
So, the fish looked like
they would be OK,
the water was pumping again
and we went home.
I walked in and I could smell
there was something out of
balance, it wasn't right,
so I ran upstairs and I saw
that some fish had died.
JO: It was very emotional,
and I felt very riddled with
guilt that we had introduced
animals into this home and we'd
killed them for no reason.
And I guess part of this
project is to share
those troubles
but we weren't living here so
I don't know if we were ready.
I was very hesitant to bring
back fish so we decided
that we wouldn't do anything
for a couple of weeks
and then Joost was like,
no, we've just gotta get fish
back in here.
JOOST: It just shows that
that ecosystem
is reliant on human tenants
as much as nature is reliant
on all the different elements
that make that work.
JEREMY: So this is
your battery wall?
JOOST: Batteries are a disaster
when it comes to recycling,
they're difficult to recycle,
so I've just been researching
and researching
and then I came across
nickel ion batteries.
- So, OK, I've bought these
in a scrap metal yard,
a dollar apiece sort of thing,
brought them home, my father
used to do a bit of solar panel
installation, he didn't think
they would suit a solar panel,
so I never put solar panels in
until after he'd died
and then after he'd died,
I thought, well,
I just started doing
my own homework
and couldn't see why they
wouldn't work,
so I bought a panel.
- Yeah. And it's worked for you?
- It worked perfectly
so I thought, right,
so I just started buying more.
- Wow.
- And they were fitted to
submarines during the
Second World War.
I believe they were incredibly
expensive at the time
and that's why no-one else
could do anything with them
as far as
alternative power goes.
JOOST: Love it, it's awesome.
I just can't believe
that these batteries
are from World War 2 and
you're still using them today.
- Oh, yes.
- Oh, I reckon it's
a game-changer.
- They're very rough
and crude looking.
This is all salt building up
around the hinges,
- Yeah.
- See, there's one
that's very stiff.
- Yeah.
They've been like that for 30
years and it doesn't matter.
- That is insane.
- Yes.
- And still functioning the way
that they were
originally designed.
JOOST: The thing
that inspires me
and excites me
is this constant connection
with brilliant people.
- It's minimalist.
- Yeah.
And that's what projects
like this have always done.
- They're magnets.
- Mm.
You know, I didn't...
Most of the crazy ideas
just come about
because you're just a magnet
for a whole bunch
of crazy people.
And then you're just like,
"why don't we do it that way?"
This battery here
is 100 years old
and still works, as good
as the day that it was made.
This is a battery
that can be recycled
but it probably never will be.
Like, my grandchildren will have
these batteries in their houses.
JEREMY: Incredible.
And so tell us how
you charge these,
like, have you got solar?
- Yeah, just solar, so South
Australian-made solar panels.
- So Australian-made solar.
JEREMY: So, we've got
climate change,
we've got a warming planet,
we've also got
an urbanising planet.
The big thing is
this thing called
the urban heat island effect.
And what that means is that,
when you have lots of asphalt,
which is black,
lots of concrete,
and then the sun is
beating down on that,
it absorbs that heat
and it retains the heat.
And so, for Joost, basically,
instead of having a black roof
which absorbs heat,
he's got solar panels,
which take the sun and
converts it to electricity,
and then he's got plants,
and plants help cool the house
and plants absorb the sun
and, through photosynthesis,
turn it into food
for the occupants,
so it's a solution
that, in dense cities, we're
all going to have to look to.
JOHN FORD:
So, you've got air in.
You're gonna sort the air out,
so, as I say,
draw it from the base
'cause carbon dioxide
will sink to the bottom.
You want a continual flow, you
want moving air all the time.
I think that's the first mistake
that a lot of people make
with mushrooms because they
think they grow in caves,
they grow in the dark
with no air movement
and they do their thing,
but most of the mushrooms
don't want to do that.
They don't grow in caves,
they grow in forests
and they want to find the light,
they want to find
that fresh air, right?
So, that's where
they want to go.
So, the most... Yeah, as I say,
the two things
we're talking about today
and trying to get right is
air flow,
because we need
lots of fresh air,
and we need humidity.
Right, and so
that's the next step.
- OK, let's talk about
humidity, then.
- Absolutely, let's do it.
- Take this off.
JOHN: So, basically, this is
going to fill with water
to a certain amount and then
underneath here is a big fan,
a big plastic fan, and
a really strong motor in there.
It basically creates
a sucking action,
it sucks the water up
through here.
So, basically,
little, tiny, droplets of water
will shoot out from here.
So, the issue with it
being on the ground
is will it reach high enough
to get humidity to the top?
JO: Is that where the shower
could come into play?
- Absolutely.
JOOST: This is going to look
so cool, I can't wait.
Hey, John, do you want to put
the first mushroom in?
- Love to.
Am I in these guys' way?
White oyster, white oyster
going in, the mushroom wall.
- OK, Jo, you need to go
and have to shower
to make sure
they've got enough steam.
- Thanks, mate.
- Absolute pleasure.
I cannot wait to see
this full of mushrooms.
JOOST: Let's see how long it
takes for this one to go in.
I can't believe
they're already popping out.
- Yeah.
JEREMY: The whole goal, right,
is that you've built a house
that is essentially
food-positive,
that it's enough
for Matt and Jo
to live here, to get enough
water, to have enough energy,
to have enough food here,
and also they like entertaining
so they're going to
have friends over,
so it's actually going
to be more than enough
food for them to be able to...
- That's my goal.
- Yeah.
So, do you think that it's
going to work, like, you know?
- Yeah.
- Yeah. I think...
I wouldn't be doing it if...
I don't know how well...
Like, I'm not saying
that this...
everything we do here is the
way that it needs to be done,
I just want people
to get inspired and go,
"He's doing it like that.
"Well, what about if
we do it like that?"
I just want it to be a catalyst.
JEREMY: I've never seen a house
do what this house does.
This is... this is something
that's come from pure creation.
This has been the evolution
of 20 years of thinking
about the environment, our food
systems, our housing systems.
And, you know, he doesn't need
people to do every part of it,
they can just take the bits
that they want.
But everyone can learn
something from what he's done.
And I think that
the big thing is that
it's so ambitious and such
a simple, clear idea.
"I'm going to make a house
"that grows enough food for
the people that live there."
Like, what a simple,
beautiful idea.
JOOST: We were kind of ready
to go but we couldn't occupy
the building, so for a lot of
January it just sat there.
Uh, I probably should've
waited to install the batteries,
because nickel ion batteries
need to be used,
otherwise they go to sleep.
And once they go to sleep
you've gotta wake them back up
which can take up to six weeks.
So, delay after delay
after delay,
and we just struggled
to get them connected
and eventually
we did get them connected
but they were sitting still for
too long and not being used.
They'd gone to sleep and
we didn't have enough time
to resurrect the batteries
and charge them properly.
I've now installed another
Australian-designed battery
which doesn't have as long
a life as what nickel ion does
but it's still a brilliant
battery that they have actually
put a lot of energy into making
sure that they can be recycled.
In hindsight, we should've just
run all of the electrical
equipment, the batteries,
all of the tools should've been
charging off those batteries
so it's my fault,
I got too excited, I should've
installed them later.
JO: Welcome to
FutureFoodSystem,
this is the entry.
I thought I'd take you
on a little tour.
So this is one of two aquaponic
systems we have in the house.
Currently, we've got
golden barramundi
and regular barramundi.
That's our bedroom,
with a grow bed.
We've got plants growing in the
top, that's designed by Joost.
They're our solar panels
out there
and they wrap around the house
like that.
We'll head up to
the biggest module,
which is the kitchen
and dining room.
There's Pippies, hey, Pippy.
This is our MCG,
our cricket farm,
so we use crickets as a source
of vitamin K2 and protein.
Dog verse crickets.
Then we've got our flow hive,
our beehive,
you can just tap the honey,
so this comes up.
And then in here
we have our bees,
so there's not much honey
in there at the moment.
Finally, got the batteries
installed
that were meant to be
at Fed Square.
Pretty excited.
Just in the last two weeks,
they've really already woken up
again and fully charged,
and hopefully
these will be in our family for
quite a few generations to come.
JO: We're not serving any
guests but we're still here.
There's some more bit and bobs
from the garden.
We've harvested over 40kg
of pumpkin.
That's been pretty cool.
And there's the view
from the kitchen window.
That is a good parsnip.
Having a garden
is really important
to the way that Matt and I cook
because we just
let the garden guide
what we're actually cooking,
it's not the other way around.
It's really about
coming out here
and seeing what's growing
and what is the best
and then just picking that
and cooking something with it.
I mean, you might eat snow peas
for a week
but they're probably
the best snow peas
you're ever going to eat. And then you learn how to serve
snow peas ten different ways.
And then, the next week,
cavolo nero is ready
and then you cook cavolo nero
five different ways.
So, I feel like we're really
pushing ourselves
with our cooking.
MATT: We'll document
all our recipes as we go
and photograph as we go.
JOOST: Matt and I want to know
if anyone's got any questions.
- Ask us, food, building,
materials, whatever.
There's no hiding
any of the ideas here
with the building, with the
food, it's gotta be out there
and that's how you can inspire
people to do this stuff, really.
JOOST: So, we used 400 grams
of tiger nuts
and got a litre of milk.
Got enough for me?
Come on, mate.
- Sure.
JO: Be interesting... Oh, yeah.
Isn't that mental?
Tiger nuts! It's so cool!
So, that's two blades - one,
two, three, four, five, six.
Seven.
Mm! Tiger nut milk
and we're gonna milk it.
JOOST: Jo, what are you making?
- Tiger nut ice-cream.
It's really starchy
and really sweet,
and then this nut meal.
Use it for stuffing or put it
in the tiger nut cake
as a bit of moisture.
And then the chickens love it.
I've never used tiger nuts
before until this house.
But they have been
a real lifesaver
when you have to have something
to produce sweetness,
you know, we're not
growing any wheat,
so to use it as flour
is awesome, as well.
And I like that challenge,
the challenge
has kind of introduced me to
something that I never imagined.
And then to be making things
that are nut free, dairy free,
gluten free, sugar free, all
from this magical little tuber.
And that is the crazy tiger nut.
Like, I feel like every country
must have their version
of something like this.
For Australia,
I think it's bunya nuts.
So silky.
Liquid gold.
Mm!
Magma, yum.
I love cooking.
I love everything about it.
- Look, there's ice-cream.
- Wait, is that ice cream?
- Yeah.
- Oh! I thought...
- Look at the bowl,
it's frozen. Does
that feel cold?
- Oh!
JO: Ice-cream.
You know what blows my mind?
It's three ingredients.
That's all it is.
Double scoop.
JOOST: I was hoping to see
some babies in there today.
Jeez, look how much darker
they are.
JO: Oh, wow!
- They've got to be
close to hatching.
- Yeah. Wow.
- That's so cool.
JO: That's my finger for scale.
JOOST: We thought that this
project would be successful
through social media
but we never expected it
to be as successful.
So, we've got people all over
the world following the project.
MAN: If you told people
that mealworms eat polystyrene,
they wouldn't believe it.
JO: People don't believe it.
Oh, it's just incredible.
So much polystyrene
goes into restaurants.
JOOST: Jo posted a video,
it had 40,000 people saw it,
on mealworms.
JO: Wow! - And I think that that's what
shocked Federation Square,
as well, the reach that we have
had globally is phenomenal.
It's a little bit
like a butterfly?
- Yeah.
So then do they just fly out
of there when they're...?
- I don't know, we haven't
worked that bit out yet.
Possums or the birds?
No, I think it's possums that
have actually beaten us to it.
MATT: Had a little nibble?
JO: We are doing a dish at
the moment which is a cake,
that we're layering with apples
and its served with
a tiger nut ice-cream.
I did a video of how
to make those cakes
and surprisingly a lot of people
have sourced tiger nuts on
their own and have made them.
And, I mean, that dish
only has four ingredients
and all of the ingredients
are coming from the house -
eggs, honey, tiger nuts, apples.
It's kind of a no-brainer
that things could be that
simple but you're
not missing out.
Yeah.
MATT: This is so unique,
and it's already becoming
the catalyst for change.
WOMAN: That's pumpkins,
we've got zucchinis,
pumpkins, tomatoes in that bed,
in the middle.
We have some tall,
skinny tomatoes.
MATT: The way people are looking
at their homes, the way they eat
food, how they prepare food,
the waste that is
generated by food.
WOMAN: I have gone zero waste
at home
by doing a few simple things.
Everything gets put into
a Bokashi bin
or into the worm farm.
MATT: Nothing's too small,
I think, be it
growing some parsley
on their balconies,
but the upside of it
is it's always more delicious,
so, you know, we're proving
this is possible.
MAN: All the scraps and that
went straight in
the top of that.
MATT: If people want to
make changes at home,
just little things,
nothing is too small,
and, once you start to
do one or two things,
it just becomes infectious
and you just do the next thing
and, you know,
in a short matter of time,
you can actually be making
a big difference.
And, with some small changes,
we didn't produce any waste.
Imagine a world without waste.
JOOST: I'm walking up there,
up the stairs
and I'm looking in the sky
and I just see
these really, really big flies,
like, they're huge.
Then I ran back up the stairs
and the whole solar panel
was covered with a blanket
of dead bees.
There's no bees in there,
what the hell?
What it was is the bees
were dragging dead bees
out of the hive
and dropping them.
MATT: It's like a massacre
JOOST: I know.
We worked out somebody was
using a chemical
to get rid of a pest.
The bees had obviously...
were attracted to it,
had taken it back to the hive.
Luckily, the bees were
smart enough to work out,
don't go back to that spot,
and within a week the hive
was back to full strength.
We couldn't believe
how resilient.
Oh, I was shocked,
I really thought
that I'd lost that hive.
JOOST: Juicy, juicy,
juiciest nashis.
- Sorry, what?
- It's been a big day.
- It's been a big six months.
JO: What are you doing?
I'll get ya, I'll get ya.
JO: What are you guys
doing here?
Stunning, right?
FutureFoodSystem.
- You guys can do the mushrooms,
I'm going to do the barramundi.
JOOST: You going to go
fishing, Matt?
- Oh, I don't know if I'm
going to be able to get one.
- That's not the attitude, mate.
- It's going to be really
hard to get one, Joost.
The water's so high.
JO: Out of everything
in this house,
I think the rainbow trout
are my favourite.
They were the yabbies,
but we've been growing these
fingerlings for months now,
they were tiny,
and now they're at full size
and ready to harvest and
we actually have to harvest
before it gets too hot.
Sorry, fishy!
It's actually really hard
to catch them...
Ooh!
..using a net.
You'd think in a small container
you could just reach in and
grab 'em but they're so tricky.
- Oh! Oh, shit, sorry.
- No, that's alright.
It's hard,
we've been living with them
and we're going to
have to kill 'em,
which, yeah, I know is part of
being a chef and eating food
but it doesn't make it
any easier.
MATT: Do you want me to,
like, poke something one way,
just to get 'em
to go towards you?
- Yeah.
- Maybe I could use the Go-Pro.
If we poke them under there,
they can swim out?
- Yeah, we can do that.
Oh, it's really murky.
JO: They're so quick.
JO: Did it go in?
- Oi, beauty!
- There you go.
JO: Oh, it's slippery.
MATT: It's got a lot of fat
in it, it's really healthy.
JO: We always have the
connection with the food
of where it comes from and
that you have to kill something
if you're going to eat meat.
And when it's in your house
and they're really beautiful
and you feed them every day
or they're there,
you have to use all of it
because you're killing it.
Matt: That, that and that,
that'll be roasted for a sauce.
The guts we save up
till we've got enough
to make a batch of fish sauce,
and then, the fillets, they
could be roasted or pan seared
or baked in the oven,
however you like.
JO: To have this fish and have
to kill it, gut it, scale it
and then prepare
and then feed it to people and
I hope that they realise that,
you know, you actually go
through probably a bit of trauma
when you kill something.
- I don't know I don't have
that connection so much,
I'm more like
it wouldn't be here
without us growing it to eat,
so, I don't know, I think it
makes me much more respectful.
For sure, like,
you have to make sure
everything is being utilised,
you definitely wouldn't
waste anything, so I think
that's a really big motivator
but for me I don't have an
issue with that side of things.
- Far out.
It was just alive
six minutes ago.
- Now it's in pieces.
JO: Because we've grown the
fish, you see how much effort
goes into every part of it,
feeding them every day
and making sure
the water's clean.
It's got, like, really nice fat
around its stomach.
- It's really healthy.
- Then, when we go to use it,
really give justice to the whole
animal and not waste anything.
Like the swim bladder,
so we can clean it up,
dry it and then deep fry it
and get a cracker.
And then same with the eyes,
you can make
crackers out of those,
as well, the skin, as well.
And then the bones
will go into compost,
which then goes
back into the soil
so it's just a complete
closed loop.
Things like organic waste
and water
and cardboard and
all these things
actually get used on site.
So, this system, this building,
uses all those materials
as a valuable resource
and recombines it
back into the building.
So, cardboard gets ground up
and turned into food
for mycelium,
then we harvest the mushrooms
and then
that compost that's generated
by the mushrooms
then goes back into the
gardens, and things like
organic waste goes
into a biodigester,
like a big stomach.
So, we inoculate this tank
with cow manure.
JO: I thought you were going
to put your hand in there.
Oh!
JOOST: Hang on, I just washed
this shirt.
Put your flowers in there.
Done.
JO: And then that just
goes into the base?
JOOST: Yeah, the bacteria
from the cow's stomach
will break down
all of our organic waste
and turn it into gas
and amazing fertiliser.
MATT: We're still
kind of measuring
how much we get out of it
but, um,
you know, we don't have
that much waste
but, when it breaks down
and when the gas is created,
it's actually quite a lot.
So, there's I think maybe
four hours a day, at least,
of cooking gas coming from this.
So, just add a little bit, poke
it in, add another little bit.
JEREMY: I was struggling with
the aesthetic of the biodigester
to be totally honest,
how do I get clients
to engage with human
waste as a resource, as well as
their food waste as a resource?
I think that sort of technology
in an urban environment
should be handled at a civic
scale, at a grid scale,
but I think it's incredible
and I think it's great
in remote locations.
So, there's been
lots of action here
but no-one, really,
in the house to enjoy it,
so it's just been us, so it's been very quiet
for the last six,
what is it now,
three months almost, longer?
- Yeah, three months.
Yeah, so we're pretty excited to
get some people into the house.
And the garden's out of control
so it's perfect.
Dumplings and fish
are both downstairs,
so we need to check them.
JO: It's been funny because
we've only ever really been
in the kitchen and now doing
all front-of-house stuff,
getting all the plates ready and
polishing cutlery and glasses.
This is the beauty about having
solar panels on the ground.
JOOST: If you, at the start of
this project said to someone,
"Look, I think we can grow food
where we live,"
everyone would assume
it's a salad.
"Do I eat a salad for
breakfast, lunch and dinner?"
And what we've proven is
the food that we've generated
over the last six months,
the diversity and difference
and it's all delicious, as well.
LOU: The crickets will be out
soon, we'll fry some up.
But we're going to
season the crickets
with the cricket salt, as well.
- Imagine it like a dukkah.
- Yeah, pretty much.
- So, you would put nuts and
different things in a dukkah,
but we're doing different seeds
and different crickets.
Bit nervous, we haven't
cooked for anyone in so long.
LOU: Kind of looks like
a garlic salt,
about a quarter roast cricket.
JO: Smells a bit like
ginger beer to me.
Can you smell it? Smell-evision.
LOU: Has a pretty nice pop.
JO: It's like having
people over for dinner,
so it's not, like,
a typical dining experience.
So, it's just... Like you would
have a dinner party at home,
it's just having people over
for dinner.
The only difference is we
just don't know who's coming.
Hello.
- Hi.
- Welcome.
- Hello!
- G'day.
- I'm Jo.
- G'day, Jo.
Come on in.
Yeah. Cheers.
- It smells so...
Cheers. And feel free
to wander up.
So, the water from the fish
tanks cycles across the growbeds
and then we've got
sweet potatoes and snow peas.
- Ah, hello.
- How are you?
Welcome. Hello.
MATT: Alrighty, everyone,
welcome to lunch.
So, there's some
different shoots,
some different veggies.
Everything you can see
is completely edible,
the flowers and even
the crickets on top.
So there's some fried crickets
in there.
It's very casual, it's like
dinner at home, right?
And the idea is to
just grab some leaves,
put it through the dip and
just eat it with your hands.
- Lovely.
- Cool, thank you.
- Try the cricket.
Yeah.
- Beautiful.
- How's your cricket?
The next little bite we have
is a cannoli that's filled
with smoked and cured trout,
rainbow trout
that is growing up here.
It's encased in
a sorghum tostada,
so similar to making a corn
chip but we made
it with sorghum,
which is a grain
that we've grown here.
- Bon appetit.
- Thank you.
JO: These are cured,
then smoked egg yolks.
And then we dry them
and then we grate them.
MATT: Sorry to interrupt
again, guys.
We have a kind of pasta
that's not pasta.
It's made from celeriac we've
just really lightly blanched.
It's like a gluten-free,
dairy-free carbonara, kind of.
Mm!
- Looks delish! Thank you.
It's fun to be cooking again
and running around,
and feel like we
have a bit of a meaning.
I think the guests have got
into it, they ate the crickets
and had some things that are
familiar and not familiar
and mixed it up.
JO: Yeah, not being able
to cook for people
has been hard and
not having people
being able to go out and dine,
so I think there's a really
nice feeling in the air
that finally we can
be around each other.
Yeah, really nice.
Kind of worried that we
couldn't remember how to cook,
but clearly that's not a thing.
JOOST: That's called recycling.
Bring your own bucket.
MATT: Something like this
is so special,
to put it into a public space,
to share it with people
is really important.
JOOST: So, there's huge
potential for us to turn
our urban areas into the most
biodiverse places on earth,
which they already are,
but what about if we
actually grow food?
Hi! It's Yvie Jones
from Studio 10.
JO: Straight lines, Costa.
I would blanch them, definitely,
and I would not have them
squeaky.
- OK.
A lot of our colleagues
are saying
it must be so nice to only
cook for 14 people a night
and it is,
but we're also
picking the vegetables,
trying to preserve them,
managing all of
the fermentations, the sauces,
the pastes, all of that flavour,
you know, important stuff.
Wow. It smells amazing. There's
so much flavour in there.
JO: It's a multi-course dinner,
so we're cooking, serving,
washing the dishes.
Usually by 10:30,
we've finished cooking food.
- And then clean up again.
- And then we clean up.
Vacuum, mop, finish the dishes
and then we're
usually in bed by 1,
1:30, and then do it again.
MATT: But, you know,
Joost reminds me all the time,
like, there's nothing like this,
it's never been done and, if
we don't do it, no-one will.
JO: It's very fulfilling,
being here.
Beans galore.
Being a part of a system that
you know is reliant on you,
and you're giving back to it
and it gives to you,
and being able to cook and
be a part of that, as well,
so you kind of close the loop
by showing that thing respect,
as well,
so it's a very fulfilling
project.
JOOST: I view the building
like a dandelion.
We've planted a dandelion
and, when it flowers,
its seeds go everywhere.
That's how I see it.
JOOST: Yeah, so I'm still
a little bit in shock,
but I'm also excited
because I've just been asked to
design a zero-waste supermarket
that implements
many of the ideas
that FutureFoodSystem is about.
Where's Sam? This could be catalyst for
change in the whole country.
Tree-free packaging and no
plastic and reusable containers.
So it's pretty exciting,
I can't believe that
this has happened.
I love the idea
that a supermarket could
be completely zero waste.
So, the organic waste
that we generate
will get fed into
a biodigester,
and then the biodigester will
create heat and energy and gas,
and from that gas we use that
for hot water,
but, also, we'll have every
second pane of glass on the roof
will be a solar panel.
So, the idea is that
it's a productive building,
but on a massive scale, it's
actually like a large version
of FutureFoodSystem really,
it's a Greenhouse
on a massive scale.
So, every single element
allows for the production
of food, but also for the
utilisation of waste on site.
And so everything
is designed to be
a circular system
and then, all the packaging,
so we'll have a washing plant
on site, so people can bring
their packaging back
to the supermarket
and it'll get reused.
There's no stickers on jars,
there's no stickers on fruit,
there's no stickers
on vegetables,
because they are the
enemy of recycling.
So, the rooftop garden,
so, as you're walking
up the aisles,
you'll actually look up
and see the plants growing
above the aisle,
so it'll be
a double-storey glasshouse
which allows you to have
productivity above,
but it also shades the
glasshouse underneath,
so we'll be able to create
a really amazing environment
for people walking
in the supermarket,
it's like a natural
air conditioner.
It'll use a lot less energy than
a conventional supermarket.
I'm a big believer in that
a vision can be realised.
I think, if you can think it,
you can realise it.
It's not easy
but I think you can do it.
It's not a compromise
to do things sustainably,
we can do everything
that we want
and have a much better life.
It doesn't matter how big
the dream
is, you can actually
make it real.
And that's really what
Greenhouse is about.
Captioned by Ai-Media
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