Videos

5 million Flemings do not live in a city centre, but in villages or city outskirts. This fragmentation creates a major challenge: how do you connect all these houses to the sewerage network and how do you ensure smooth and sustainable mobility? Does everyone have to move to the city? No, as architect and urban designer Sophie Leemans (KU Leuven) explains in this video.

You have no doubt come across it when opening your fridge: a packet of cheese full of mould or a pot of sauce with a suspiciously bulging lid. The culprits? Bacteria, yeasts and moulds. Food producers try to prevent this type of spoilage as much as possible, by ensuring that a product contains as few micro-organisms as possible when it leaves the factory. Bio-engineer Thijs Vackier is working on new cleaning agents that can better break down biofilms, protective mantles around micro-organisms, in food processing equipment.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could use a sponge to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and help stop global warming? That's what Yoran De Vos (VITO) is hoping to achieve. But his sponge is nothing like an ordinary kitchen sponge.

Insects and fruit, it doesn't seem like a very successful combination. And yet, insect breeders and their 'critters' can help strawberry farmers to grow more and healthier strawberries. Lise Soetemans (VITO) explains how.

How do we prevent power breaks when everyone starts driving electric vehicles? With smart grid pricing! Niels Govaerts (VITO - KU Leuven - EnergyVille) explains how this works.

Our poo and pee are too precious to waste, says Angelou Papangelou. The phosphorus in our excrement and in animal manure can serve as the food of our food and shouldn't go to waste. That's why Anastasia Papangelou is mapping the nutrient stocks and flows in the country, so that we can put our poo and pee to good use!

The land of farmers in coastal Bangladesh remains flooded for almost half of the year. To tackle this, Bangladeshi farmers use 'floating farms'. Jinat Hossain tells you more about this innovative adaptation mechanism. 

Have you ever broken one of your cherished devices, but had to dump it because you couldn't fix it? Julie Metta (KU Leuven) wants to help us reclaim our belongings, by uncovering local heroes, called the Makers.

To make the production of plastics and other chemical processes less energy-intensive and waste-producing, Max Bols turns to nature. Enzymes, the catalysts of living cells, hold the key to improve chemical processes, as he explains in this video. 

What if we could make plastic out of... Wood waste? This is already possible today, but unfortunately the technology to make such bioplastics is not yet fully developed. Tim Croes wants to help change that.

Soil biodiversity in our European forests is in bad shape. By focusing on public awareness, Iris Vanermen wants to help keep our forests healthy, so that we and future generations can enjoy them for a long time to come.

Too often, companies take too little account of the environmental impact of these inventions when developing new products. Gwenny Thomassen wants to change this: she developed a model to calculate both the cost price and the impact on the environment for products based on micro-algae.