My name is Cain Bacicalupi. My last name is Italian. That means that I'm supposed to be having a siesta right now. But I really love this subject and wanted to come talk to you about it. And the bottom, you know, like that little byline says I'm a fixer coder teacher. The reality is I've done this combination over the last, like, seven years of going back and forth between consulting and being a rescue CTO. And so I've been doing these trajectory starts and then the trajectory kind of rescues. And right about now, I'm feeling like a Greenfield project would be really great rather than rescuing another Brownfield project. But I wanted to get across everything that I've been learning over the last seven years soon and now so that people could learn from it. So what is this evergreen thing that I'm talking about? And yes, I made it up. And I made it up so uncreatively that it's probably already out there is something that you've heard of. So in the industry, there's this talk about Greenfield projects and Brownfield project. And you can see kind of from the illustration what's going on, Greenfield is new and fresh and everything is possible. And Brownfield is like, holy crap, I cannot do another point because I have sunk myself in the oblivion of tech terribleness. I'm sorry, my stuff is not working that great. So evergreen, like my definition of it is, first of all, you have to have a long-term relationship with your project, which I think is pretty rare. I've had the luck or good fortune to work on two evergreen projects. One, I was an architect. And one, I revived a terrible Brownfield project and worked on it long enough to see it go evergreen again. But like one to two years, and then it's easier after that period than before. And the reason why is because we actually know more about the domain than we did at the beginning. And so one of the things that goes wrong with projects is like at first you know nothing and then you're building on top of that nothing. But at some point, you know a lot about it and you want to go back and just like fix all the mess that you made. But with an evergreen project, what you see instead is that you know this domain and therefore you can build like abstractions that will quickly convert like features that happen very often in your product into the real thing. And also that on a deeper level, things are decoupled enough that when you do this massive product or domain reimagining, it's relatively cheap. It's not as cheap as like one of those, you know like this is the expected feature kind of thing, but it's pretty cheap. So why do fields go so brown and they do, right? And it's because that thing I was talking about, about the domain, everything that we believed is actually false. And so a couple things, one is the product changes. And you know like I remember when I first started doing development with teams, I would just be like, there would be two things that I think. Be like this time, I hope that product doesn't screw this up because I've got it perfect. And if they just stick in line with my technology, it's all gonna be good, right? And the other thing that I would think is, and those other developers, they'd better get in line too, because everything's working out. And then inevitably everything would not work out and it wasn't necessarily like those other people, it was very often me, right? Because the reality is like everything that we believe at the very beginning of a project is absolutely and totally wrong. And our instincts are to stop everything and rebuild. And our instincts are wrong, right? Cause this is what happens. Like you end up like building a brownfield project a second time around because the reality is like what you don't know about the future is just as unknown. You know about the past now and you can rebuild it, but you don't know about the future. And so now when I start inventing things, this is my invention, the law of optimistic rebuild, which is an unchanged system, or I'm sorry, an unchanged team will build themselves into the same legacy problems, which is kind of like that, those two images that you saw at Brownfield and then Brownfield again. So my daughter, my youngest daughter, she's 11 and she's really smart and she's been getting by with ADHD being really smart. But she's gotten to this place like in middle school where she isn't following the instructions and like her counselor has been like here's what you need to do, you need to underline things and she's taught us to teach her to underline things. And so it's become this weird practice where I'm like underline the most important parts of this sentence and you find out really interesting things even if you don't have ADHD. So one of the things here is that the unchanged team part. So there's some kind of implication that you need to change the team in order to change the process, right? And then there's this rebuild thing and the rebuild thing is a little bit ambiguous because if you do an extraction to kind of rebuild, that's a rebuild too. You haven't like rebuilt the world from scratch but it is a rebuild. And then there's this legacy problem thing which is probably the most known thing there, right? So to distill it down, unchanged teams rebuild legacy problems. And you know, because I'm inventing things and why not? I'm gonna give you a corollary which is it is a waterfall process to rebuild what you already know. Which means that even if you did Agile, it's gonna take three to 10 times longer to rebuild it because it's waterfall. And more than likely your business can't sustain that kind of thing. So why does Greenfield feel so good? I mean, to me, like when I start a project, it feels like the beginning of a relationship, you know?  Look at this, it's all perfect. And I kind of alluded to this fact that it feels like anything is possible and if only things don't change, things will be good. And so there's this rocket start. There's like this amazing velocity trajectory. You're starting something new. You feel like a hero, you know? And I've been a consultant in a lot of situations like this and that X, you know, in the velocity graph, that's where you get out, right? As a consultant. So where does this velocity come from? And it comes from borrowing and we need to borrow. And I wanna say like right here that this is, like for me, this is kind of a phenomena that I've been seeing growing since I got into the startup industry in 2005 because I used to work on projects that existed for a very long time and were like, I was one of the only developers in their database projects of some sort. But now everything's kind of squashed and accelerated and there's this need to like rapidly through the startup industry, jump to like something that is like fabulous instantly. And so we're borrowing a lot of stuff and it's good to borrow that stuff. And we're borrowing from the standard library. We're also borrowing it from gems and we think that we're getting code but we're actually getting a lot more than code. We're getting architecture. So if you think about any framework that you use, it comes packaged with architecture. And I'm like not talking about Rails or Sinatra. I'm talking about event machine versus celluloid, right?  Which direction am I going? And architecture, decision that's gonna affect and impact like all the code that falls underneath it. But it gets even more complicated when you start to look at Rails engines or other libraries that come packaged with like a ton of domain, right? And product. And then you're very tightly tied to whatever it is that you borrowed. So there was an article, it was about a year ago, an article, I mean blog. And it was on code climate, which is an excellent, excellent, excuse me a second. It's an excellent, excellent product and they write great articles about software design. And they coined this term. I think they coined this term. I think they're like me and just making stuff up called technical drift. And it's worth thinking about. It's like, and this is their quote, which I think is awesome and a little bit harsh. It's a phenomenon that occurs when a development team continuously, this is the harsh part, continuously fails to recognize and adapt to change. Because I think it only takes a little bit of failure to get to Brownfield. Causing the concepts in the software domain and the concepts in the code to start to slowly drift apart from one another. And then you get to technical debt and the technical debt has interest and interest compounds. And very quickly you are not in a place where you can do anything. So if you look at the adjusted velocity, the shaded part is kind of, have you noticed that I've got graphs with like no numbers? Isn't this awesome? I can make anything true here. So the shaded part is borrowed and the rest of it is what's actually earned. And a more realistic goal is, yeah, there's a lot of graphs here, is a linear progression that your velocity doesn't change over time. And I just wanna say it's a really hard thing to achieve. And so I think in people's heads, there's like, oh, that initial velocity, I just wanna find a way to harness it and have it forever. And just like, boom, I'm a rocket forever. And the reality is just maintaining the velocity that you have is an incredibly hard thing. And what you see here with the multiple lines is like scaling it with developers. So you start with like set number of developers and then with each one, you add like a linear hopefully amount of velocity. But what you tend to see in teams is that it's got diminishing returns. And the Brownfield progression looks more like this. There's this initial like amazing velocity. And then, you know, the consultant leaves. Yay, feeling like a hero.  Like, oh my God, we have done so much. And then when things start to not go very well, they think, oh my God, what is wrong with me? And they don't think like, holy cow, I now have to pay back all this like debt and stuff that I have borrowed against.  It's so hard to get anything done at all, right? And the reality is like the total number of features is the area under the graph. And like, especially with startups, I'll hear people saying, well, you know, I just have to prototype it. I don't need to test it. I don't need to design it. Well, it's okay if there's a 300 line method in the middle of my controller. It's all fine because this is a prototype. And then they outlive their prototype. And they're like, oh no, we're making money. What do I do? And the reality is like way before they got to that place, there was a moment when the payoff like switched, right? So there's a moment when like this flat kind of unglamorous trajectory of like persisting velocity like ends up being a much better benefit than that like massive debt incursion and then the plummet that inevitably comes. So now I'm gonna make up more laws. This is a lot of software stages. And this is essentially saying like, maintenance is not the same thing as launching and there have to be different rules. And the corollary is that treating maintenance the same as launch will lead to diminishing velocity in that technical debt thing. So what are the maintenance best practices? Well, it turns out like this is like well-known and also hard to follow. I just have to do a call out to Jim Wyrick who died this past February. And it was a sad moment for me even though I barely knew him. I made a once 2009 at a conference here. Actually not to send you, but like RubyConf where I was speaking for the first time and there weren't that many women and I felt like a little odd. And at some point he like walked over to the small cluster of women that was like just standing there going, I don't know if we fit. And he was just like, hello. And he had just given an incredible presentation on solid. And it was just like he was such a mensch in addition to being like an incredible educator and the designer of rake and various other things. So let's talk about solid. And I'm not gonna do as good a job as he did. So 2009 you should look it up on Comfreaks for RubyConf. So single responsibility. So the irony here is the single responsibility actually has two definitions. So each class should have one responsibility and believe it or not that's not as specific as a second definition which is each one should only have one reason to change. And so what that means is that you have this code scattered all over the world. And each of these things could really have one responsibility but the code is still spread out everywhere. And then like what the second statement means is like all those things should be one object, right? So that when that domain need changes it's in one location. So let's try and apply this to my fake code example. And yeah, it's a cartoon. Cause it's easier to take part than like a two underlined method. And I'm really gonna take this part. So there's at least like two vehicle like objects in there. So we know like we can just be like single responsibility. No, not here, right? But like trying to figure out how to get to single responsibility is its own like kind of beast.  Maybe the slug's responsibility is trying to like glue these things together. And that's all fine except there's these other things that are kind of worrisome, right? We could extract like two objects except there's these worries like those bumps on the top of the car which is bottom of the car. Is that like gonna become the rest of the tank? Is there gonna be one like big circular tank universe? The stuff coming out on either side of the car. So the car is kind of an issue, right? Could that be like in some way like smoothed out so it's a little bit more symmetrical and we can like build some interfaces off of that. But truly the most worrying thing for me about this image is the face of the slug. Cause there's this implication that you're starting with like this object that's deep in the mechanical like universe of this app and then it like goes out to the user interface and it's like, hi. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, separation of concerns not there at all. So I don't know what to do with this object. This one's a little bit easier and it's still troubling, right? And in terms of singular responsibility not gonna help us much. All I can say is nope, not there, right? So let's try and tackle it from the oh point of view. Open, closed. This is open for extension. Usually that extension means inheritance. Closed for modification. So what that kind of implies is that I should be able to take this object and inherit from it and change the behavior in the ways that I need to. So let's explore with that. So I would like in this case to have more legs. Same amount of tentacles, more legs. Okay, cool. All we have to do is extract out of that 200 crazy method everything relating to appendages. So we're starting to have a sense that there are appendages here and we extract out appendages and we've got a place that's creating all this and then we can override it. And if we're really good, we use the template method and we create these hooks inside that so that we don't even have to call super or anything crazy like that and all the original appendages get built and then the new appendages get built and everything's really good and then I only want two legs. We're at like two legs and two tentacle-ish things, right? And then I've got a Liskoff substitution principle. I gotta tell you when I talk to my team of junior developers and I'm like, oh, that's a Liskoff substitution problem. Like, it doesn't go anywhere, right? But like, wait, let me show you the definition and this is why it goes nowhere. It's probably the easiest thing of all these. It's like the least fuzzy and therefore it's the most mathematically specific which makes it really hard to understand. And so if we get to what it really means is this is the violation, right? There's more specificity in the parent than the child and this is what it looks like in the animal metaphor which is, I don't know why. The thing that everybody uses to explain inheritance. Now I have never worked on an app with animals. But somehow, and I use a lot of inheritance, probably more than I should according to the luminaries but never done an animal. So you can see that the proto-animal is like this crazy thing with wings and a beak and so on and so forth and then you have to remove stuff in the children and it's supposed to go in the other direction so that you have like some very simple base and things there. So we can switch the inheritance, right? And then we're back to the LISC off positivity. And then we get to interface segregation which is about like kind of defining. Yeah, I don't know, this is like vague. They're all kind of vague. And that's kind of a problem, right? But like essentially what we're looking for is like these appendages, they all kind of act the same except for that one, right? That has a mailbox on the end of it. That's really troubling. We're gonna have to find someplace else where I don't know where it's gonna go but we've got two kinds of appendages at this point. Maybe we're gonna have more kinds of appendages. Maybe that's what's implied by this crazy monster. And maybe they do things like expand and contract and move to the left and move to the right. And we can build that interface and that's gonna lead to like some kind of monster kind of thing where we're passing those things. Like this is the moment to extract those things into classes. Awesome, now we've got like 150 lines or something like that that puts it all together and we get to D and hopefully D is gonna solve all our issues except it's very vague, right? Dependency inversion, you should depend on things that are like more less changeable. I don't know, which is why very often that's gets implemented is dependency injection. So I don't know what I'm gonna need but if I inject it then it can change. That seems pretty fair and so then you end up kind of like with this kind of an object where like the, you have this core God knows what that's still not single responsibility and you pass in all these appendages and they do what they're supposed to do, right? Who knows? But this still isn't single responsibility and it's like kind of failed us. So what are the goals of solid? It's to help us to respond to change. And the thing is it's not very specific, right? Which I was kind of saying over and over again and the rules are tightly coupled. So when we went to dependency injection we lost all the inheritance and we were now like delegating, right? Which means that like two of those methods were just like dropped off the thing and we can no longer use them to kind of help us like manage all the complexity. And the other thing is that the single responsibility and the end, the dependency injection they were like more theoretical and not so motivated by like changes in the product that we could let go, okay, I'll do this.  And so I think there are really great guidelines if you already have like instincts about it and you already know it. And if you don't, you know, which is more and more the case in my life it's not so good, which is sad, right? So what can we do instead? We, you know, like my sense is like we need something much more specific. So I made some more laws. Your team should have solid design expertise but it doesn't have to be everybody on it. And if it's not everybody on it then you should have a solid teacher which is not necessarily like implied by the expertise. Some people don't like to teach and the people that are learning need to be willing to learn. And the corollary, you know, is about your learners. So what we need is something that's actionable for everyone on the team. That's kind of reasonable. So what else can we do? So has anyone seen this funny bummer sir? Oh, you are on the spot, Sandy. This guy I used to work for. Jeff Dean, he was at Pivotal Labs and he worked on a project that lasted there for seven years, which is pretty mind blowing because they're, you know, in the business that I've been in sometimes too where you're like, boom, rock it off. And then you like are like, okay, have fun with that, right? But this was a seven year project and so he invented this bumper sticker. At least that's what he told me. Maybe other people invented it too. What would Sandy Mets do, right? Like how are we gonna deal with like the maintenance, the ongoing maintenance of it? And so here's some actionable stuff. Hire Sandy, she's available and embarrassed and in the front seat.  I'm gonna go talk to you. So, but the other, you know, if you can't convince your managers to hire her, which I should say like my last rescue project, we had a consulting budget and it wasn't even something I was thinking of but I was like, okay, she just wrote a book. Let's bring her in. And I was like, it'll be another person that can help explain like why their instincts are just not so good. And what I didn't expect to get out of is the sense that this is very teachable. And I think it took it a lot farther than she actually intended because I came up with my own stuff. These are her rules, by the way, and I'm gonna leave it to an investigation of your own stuff. Like she came up with these rules and this is a source of like both pride and embarrassment while she was working at like our little consulting gig. So the thing that was really cool is like after a year of kind of like plotting through this mess, we got to this place of evergreen. And I was like, awesome. I feel so good about myself. I feel so good about my team. And most of them were junior developers and there were like one or two senior people. And it was great, right? And then we had Sandy Mets come back after a year. It was almost exactly a year. And what I find out is we were not doing what Sandy Mets would do. We were doing something else and it was crazy. And like we found this out because she was doing these exercises. And one of them had to do with dependency injection and she just kind of like built this road and she was like, okay, and the conclusion is you do dependency injections. You set them all loose. And they went off and did God knows what. And we were sitting back watching and she's like, I don't know how to reign them in. You know these people better than I do. What should I tell them about like dependency injection to get them to go to that conclusion? And I was like, I'm not sure. Because the reality is I was doing something else with them. This is my law of STD sub two. And it's like a large group of junior engineers can practice this thing that I'm gonna tell you about with just a little bit of solid X for T's and they can get to every. So small, and I went smaller than Sandy. She was like, here take these rules. And I was like, no, no, we're gonna go even smaller. So we did. And what that means is like on your screen, like when two people are pairing and editing this, they can see absolutely everything there which takes away a lot of pain. And also forces like greater granularity, right? And test drive it too. I had an internship program where I was teaching people who didn't know how to code at all how to code. And there was like a lot of resistance from people that had coded for a while about teaching test driven development. So what I would do is I would just be like, oh, that's a nice spike. Delete everything and start again with tests. And they would be like, what the first time? And then after that, they'd be like, oh, okay. And what would happen is you, I mean it goes to that interface part of solid. Like you're writing out before you get to the code like what you expect, like what the contract is. And it leads to like everything that you could hope for from solid as long as you have like somebody solid coming in and going, not single responsibility there. D, there's two D's like the sub to you. Dependency and Jack, I just removed the inversion because it's kind of confusing for people and law of demeanor. So only talk to your neighbors and leave it to your neighbors to kind of like encapsulate what they're talking to you. And one of the big like kind of risks in there is like all that like checking for nil that can just like percolate all the way down your app and Ruby. And actually that's what I was thinking about with the maths talk this morning that the real typing issue that I see is like that nil versus the thing I expect. And you know, the null pattern can take care of that for you, but whatever.  Let's kind of construct like a rule for our team about that. And most of the rules were about Rails. So like an example would be don't put anything in your model at all because if you put anything in there everybody's gonna shove everything in there. So put it somewhere else. So we had like these query objects whose job it was to just maintain all the queries. So the relationships were really the only thing in there. It's not like an ideal situation for a bunch of senior developers but it worked good for this team. So problem solved, right? Yeah, not so much. The reality is rules don't make code. It's the people that make the code. So getting back to like this internship, like there's a like really peculiar problem. Well, let me hold off on this for a second because like Sarah May like did a great talk at Fluent where she brought up this law that I did not make up. So here's the first law that's a real law except for the law of demeanor. And it's Conway's law. And it's a little inscrutable too. Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of those organizations. So what you usually hear as the example for this and I think the reason that he came up with this is you take a whole bunch of engineers and you say we need a compiler and then they divide up into four groups and you end up with a four pass compiler because they're talking to each other in the way that their systems run. And so, you know, anyways, back to the team and code, like you can kind of start to see where some of these crazy objects come from, right? Because code is about communication. And I didn't really realize this until I started working with other people which is a weird thing to say. So I had like these, you know, before my life in web I was doing databases and I was working on like government, education, nonprofit kind of like database things that, you know, like they had no other opportunities to build these massive applications and I would have these ongoing relationships and the projects were pretty evergreen given that they didn't need a lot of product change, right? And also given that I was the only one I was communicating with. So all I needed to do was build out, you know, what am I gonna understand in three months when they come back to like tweak this? But as soon as you start coding with other people, you're dealing with a communication issue, like is this the most clear to my whole team? Which is usually not true initially and so you have to like come up with this group kind of ethic which is why these rules are really important. So what do you do to choose a team that's gonna work well together? And this is like the hard fuzzy part although I've not made any laws but I did make some kind of bizarre metrics that I wanted to share. So what happened is I had this internship program, we put six people through it in groups of two pairs and it was a great internship program actually, it was super successful but there was this weird problem which was how do you hire for people to code and be great coders that don't yet know how to code? That's like a weird problem, right? Because usually and it's a false kind of false sense of security like the things that we do to test coders for how they code is we make them do these weird intellectual puzzles that they don't do in real life, right? And so like that's a possibility, you could like put them in front of a whiteboard and see if they've read that like technical interview book but not really effective which Google admitted last year, thank God, right? And so like we started to come up with these metrics and as it turns out like communication was like top of the mark and enjoyable which is like a really weird one, right? You don't wanna think like well I actually care about how enjoyable this person is but I'm not talking about like I wanna go out for beer with this person, I'm talking about like I wanna sit down and figure out and collaborate on this project together, right? I wanna figure this out with this person and I'm willing to do it because if you dislike kind of working with somebody to that degree like there's nothing good that's gonna come from you know like this. The organization is really gonna fail on those little problems, right? Little problems that are actually huge in the code. And so there's a point that I wanna make in this and the effective stuff in general which is like there's like the possibility of squashing diversity and all this, right? Like you can go in this direction of like oh shit, this is not good, we need monoculturalism and I'm not suggesting that at all and which is why it's really like do I wanna collaborate with this person versus do I wanna go out for beer? And it's really different. And then the other thing like the last one there, the last one on this slide I have another one that takes a whole slide because it's so weird is motivation and so like what I was always looking for is proof that this individual was trying to educate themselves because you know we want people that are like are driven and I want people that work a sustainable pace, right? But I want people that are like driven to their own education. So the last one that takes, the last metric that takes up like its own slide is software and it's a weird metric and actually at some point the company that I was at took these metrics and started applying to the rest of the company to sales and marketing and you know like program management and all sorts of stuff and this wonder of the CEO crazy and you just dropped it. But it's a reality and very often when we ran into problems we'd be like oh this is a self-awareness problem. And so it's like this fuzzy generalization almost like solid principles that you kind of know it when you see a problem in it but it's, so there's like a couple things, learning style, right? Do I know how I learn best and can I teach myself? So that's in there. Do I know my environment related to the learning style? Do I know my environment to like set kind of like a path through it? Impact control like and then I'll get up to the top one. Impact control is really about like do I know how my behavior is impacting other people? And that's kind of like a big deal, right? On a team. And so there's a lot of people with some level of autism in programming and that's kind of like this impact control thing like can I see beyond myself? And just general geekiness is like a kind of a narcissism where everything is reflected back and you can take on those people and I love geeks, they're so cute, right? But you just have to know what you're dealing with and as a team you have to be able to just be like keeping that person or people in control, right?  And so maybe you should say it this way and actually like I had very low expectations that that kind of dialogue could go well and that actually you could talk to anybody about these metrics and be like you're not very enjoyable and you can't actually say that, you can't. But you can coach somebody too. You know the way you're acting, people aren't wanting to work with you and it changes and I had a really like I was just for a month I spent teaching at a boot camp and there were like two people that were like just having profound arrogance problems and also one of them was having like that autism kind of spectrum thing and didn't realize he was going through the room alienating people and it took very little, I mean kind of an argument with both of them but it got them on track. It was hard for me, good for them and it's possible to like really like get people on track and so the last one is actually the first one is imposter versus arrogant and actually like when my team came up the arrogant wasn't the word they used. And you know a little bit and even a medium amount of imposter is like fine that's like humility. Like I feel like I used to have imposter syndrome and now I'm kind of in that other direction which I got to work on, right? But too much of it and it's really hard to like promote that person's own personal growth. Like there's a like again it's like one of those things like you take it on and know what you're working with and how much management resources you wanna devote to that. The arrogant thing like I was saying it's possible to like bang somebody into shape on that and it really depends on the people which gets to you know like this is all for regular you know garden variety people that haven't coded before like how to figure out like are they gonna be good and so what are the metrics that we can use for people to actually know how to code and that's like a totally different thing, right? And so we use the same metrics in the end because it turns out it was really good for knowing whether somebody was gonna participate well on the team which was like significant and important but there were two additions and one is design like so if we work on a refactoring problem together which is pretty important if you have like a brown field thing that you're trying to convert to green field or if you just wanna stay in that evergreen state how can you handle this you know duplication this mess this disaster, right? So design would be in there and design with refactoring but there's this other element of faith and this is where my talk completely disintegrates and I'm gonna leave it on you to go off into the world and figure this out because like what the hell with faith, right? Like there was actually like originally like a whole section of this talk that I cut out thank God for you two that was about orthodox Judaism and what we could learn about like learning and about like following and believing and having faith and also changing the whole system like changing the religion actually but I took it out because it's a little bit bizarre and I don't know where it goes and also like I went back and I talked to somebody that I used to work with and I was talking to him like really passionately about like you know like this and then there's the tall man and it starts with its tiny thing and it's in the torrent and then they make a then there's a mitzvah that gets attached to it and then from that mitzvah you have this tiny little like kernel of truth that gets put in the Talmud and then there's like this like you know tree like rings around it and you know you're like and if we had that for code, right? Like and any time that you were working with an octopus the tentacles shall each be their own class, right? And then somebody else comes along it's like no, no this one time I was working with an octopus and the most important thing were actually the suction cups and so that should be its own class and everything else can be like subordinate to that and like this whole like Talmud of like solid design principles and stuff like this and he just looked at me like I was crazy he was like I don't know what you're talking about I think that people are just bored and that's why they go outside these rules sometimes and that was actually the biggest problem that we had with that evergreen project is like people just going yeah, yeah I wanna do best practices but why can't I just write my like 200 line method that worked fine for the rocket start and it should work fine now so I don't have an answer to this one this is like a couple slides back is where my real talk ended and this is like what I need to put out to the world like go solve this please, right? Cause hopefully I won't be doing another brownfield revival for at least a year I kind of need a break and so to sum it up for going evergreen you need to have some solid, get some STD sorry and you need a great team and that's all I've got except I can answer your questions and also like if you want these slides even though there's no code except the weird cartoon monsters it's like I tweeted it out earlier today right before the top.


Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Circular Metabolism podcast, the bi-weekly meeting where we have in-depth conversations with thinkers, researchers, activists, policymakers, and people on the ground that try to help us better understand the metabolism of our cities, and also how to reduce the environmental impact of them in a socially just and context-specific way. On today's episodes, I want to switch gears a bit and leave theory for a moment and come back down to earth, pun intended, okay, bad pun aside, today I want to focus on a great initiative based in Brussels that transforms excavated earth of construction sites into building materials. As such, they use probably one of the biggest waste of flows of cities, which is by the way a local resource, and reduce the need for new construction materials that are often imported in our case of our cities. To let us know more about these fascinating initiatives, I have Anton Martens, the business developer of BC Materials. And with all that being said, Anton, welcome to the podcast, and could you perhaps introduce a bit yourself and what BC Material does? Hi, Aristeed, thank you for having us. As I mentioned earlier to you, it's a real honor to be here at this podcast because we've had a lot of interesting insights by you and the guests that you have. So BC Materials is a startup. It's actually a spin-off of BC Architects. And BC Architects started around 10 years ago when a small group of architects, four young architects, went to Burundi to build a library. And at the spot, they noticed that the spot was so isolated. Muyinga is a very small village in Burundi, which is a very big country. And it would be practically impossible to import traditional materials like big bricks or concrete. And if you wouldn't want to make the bricks yourself, you would have to cut down the trees, which was very dangerous because it would be dangerous for the locals, for biodiversity, for all agriculture. And so they decided to think about what the local possibilities were. And there was an entrepreneur who explained to them that you can actually build with raw earth. And that was the big revelation that you can compress earth blocks and that you can build a construction with that. And so the library in Burundi was built with excavated earth on the spot, actually just dug out. And it was a real revelation. And then in Brussels, when the group came back, we saw all the excavated earth here on site that was not used. And we noticed that, in fact, people hadn't been building like that for centuries, but it was just never learned in architecture school. So on that time, it was a revelation. And it was started to be integrated into BC Architects projects, just specific architectural projects, but with earth locally excavated or close by. But because we wanted to nudge the market a bit more, it's really like you want to tickle the market. You see that construction sector is super polluting 40% of CO2 emissions, a third of waste streams, maybe a third of air pollution too, which is a big issue, especially because of corona. So we wanted to push the market a bit more. And then we said, like, what if we use the excavated earth that we see every day here in Brussels? In Brussels alone, it's 2 million tons that is excavated every year. What if we use that earth to make building materials? And we actually tried to sell them. It was like a bit of a crazy idea, especially because you have to have the infrastructure, the tools. You have to make the products, obviously, like a kind of finished basic material, like a plaster or compressed earth block and a round earth. And yeah, we're now three years further. We can definitely say there is a growing market for it because people are attracted to the fact that you have a local material, that you have a healthy material and a circular material. So it is only one startup that is doing this in Belgium, but it's showing what is possible with the metabolism of the city. And could you walk us through this whole? As you said, I mean, of course, it's not going from an anecdotic or, let's say, small architectural experiments, which we could do a number of small libraries, let's say, in Belgium or in Brussels, to actually becoming a manufacturer yourself. There are so many moving pieces, I can imagine. Could you? So are you the ones that are getting the excavated soil? Or can you walk us through this process and how this works? A good question because it can be quite complicated. And in that sense, it kind of starts when somebody else starts to build. So usually the floor has to be uniformized or earth has to be excavated for parking for a garage, for a cave, something like that, especially in Brussels with a lot of construction going on. There's a lot of earths going in and out. Nowadays, usually about 70% of that earth goes to Walloon or to Flanders, where it's usually a bit like dumped in inquiries and mines. Now they've already have some difficulty of getting rid of the earth because there's so much being excavated amongst others with the Austerweal connection, but it is a problem. So the flux is so big that it's considered as a waste for us. It's not really waste. Officially it is a waste. And so we see that the transporters, they have to drive pretty far to get rid of the earth. We can tell them, but we can actually use that earth. So we don't have to drive that far. So for them, it's a cost less. So we take up the earth that is tested unpolluted and good quality, virgin quality, actually, and we can start transforming it at our sites at BC Materials, where we have the different streams that arrive and that we have the right tools and the right infrastructure to mix it. That's one way of working. We can also work on the spots, but then we have to do more tests where we actually use the excavated earth fresh from the spots and directly into the materials. The nice thing about producing this way is that everything you do can be electrified. Even the water that you use, you can use rainwater. It's a very low tech approach, but you have to have the knowledge of the mixes, how you make a clay plaster, how you make ram dirt. And that is very important, especially because it has been a tradition for centuries. But we've just lost it over the last century with the industrial era, which brought good things, but also a lot of bad things amongst which forgetting traditional techniques. And it's a bit funny because, I mean, we both know Brussels a bit. The Sablon, which is like a bit of a posh neighborhood in Brussels. Well, it's called Sablon for a reason because they used to excavate sable sands from the spot with which the rest of the buildings in the neighborhood were built. And it's the same thing for the city hall of Saint-Gilles that used to be a quarry where sand was excavated. And I think that's a bit interesting about what we do is that we don't always know that within our city there are the tools, there are the resources to build, because we've started to think that a city is a place where you consume, where you go to concerts, where you have stuff going on, recreations, people are entertained, there are services, banks. But you can actually produce in the city with the materials that are present and do kind of urban mining, use the earth from the spot to integrate it in construction sites on the spot. Yeah, I mean, of course, it's such an evident idea once you present it that way, right? I mean, why should we or would we actually take out valuable and precious materials and just put a stamp of waste on it and then take it out of your city and then have to drive, I don't know, a couple of hundreds or 100 kilometers away of your city and then dump it. So I can imagine that takes off a lot of the steps because it's in any case the waste transporter that needs to do the tests, that needs to transport everything. And you already buy off from, let's say, the clean earth and then only you work on that locally on your site or you go to, because when you go on the sites, I can imagine you have to do the tests, it's not done. It's usually the building clients on the spot that have to do the tests because he orders the excavations and then based on the tests and the test results, the excavator can decide this is earth that is polluted. There's also polluted earth in Brussels and the industrial zones, for example. But mostly, especially when it comes from very deep, it's just unpolluted and you notice it immediately by the tests that it's useful. And in that sense, we've been maybe in the past to a bit is the same thing with secondhand materials and secondhand materials are considered low grade that you shouldn't really buy low quality. And it's a bit part of our economic system is that we've thought a lot about maximizing profit and just selling. And to maximize profit, you actually have to offer something new to a person every year or something like that. And in that sense, the approach, the circular approach and the doughnut approach that has also been talked about in this podcast is another way of thinking about the materials that you create and that you reuse. So I'm wondering, you know, so we also had some other people on the podcast that kind of reuse local materials of Brussels, such as Rotor with, as you say, secondhand construction materials or Stefan from Sonya and Woodcock and all of that. Do you think that there was an awareness stage that you or you still need to raise awareness to your clients, to, let's say, the clients that build buildings and build homes about what are the benefits of using your materials? So you mentioned your materials, Plaster and Bricks? Yeah. OK, yeah. So do they already get it 100 percent? So from the experience of Stefan, they kind of get it 100 percent, like, you know, wood from the forest. It is local, you know, the story kind of sells the products for itself. In your case, do you feel that it's also the same case? It's very easy for people to understand the value of using earth in their projects? We have a lot of similarities and we know each other well. And I think that's that's one of the points where we differ in the sense that that earthbuilding is really close, has been close to nonexistent in Belgium. It's very rare that people still are used to be very rare, that people constructed in earth. And in that sense, you have a kind of group, a segment of people that is very ecologically minded, that wants to build in a sustainable way and that is very quickly convinced of the assets. Once you mention it, the fact that it's circular, the fact that it's ecological, the fact that it's good for air quality inside, the fact that it's acoustically better, it only has advantages. That group is quite quickly convinced. There is an even smaller group of people that knows earthbuilding and knows that there are materials from a classic quarry that can be produced from that. But we go even further by using what is officially considered as waste. But then you have the giant, giant majority that doesn't know earthbuilding. And once you talk to them and you present your case with the assets, that you trigger them. And we are doing that as we speak. We've been doing it the last year. We first try to convince a bit of people who have already were ecologically minded and already worked with clay pastor. And just earthbuilding in Sey is still a bit, we have to be honest, it's still a bit thought of as something that you do in Africa or in Asia. But that is for a majority of the people not so common in Belgium, even though Bokrek is a very known example. And we are just updating and innovating in applying the materials in a, dare I say it, kind of sexy, contemporary way. Or we're trying to at least to do that. So I think in some cases, people come in here and they say, I went around the wall without knowing anything about the circular or the ecological aspects of it, just because they think it's very, it's very cool and it looks very cool. And for me, that's just as fine. And then we explain them a bit about the origin story and what we do. And they like it even more. But there are different ways of approaching it. And in that sense, we'll try to use every asset that earthbuilding has to convince people. And did you have any case where it was actually the client that excavated the soil, that used the soil within their own building? Yeah, there are people who really go all the way or all the way the last mile, you can say, and really ask for the test and really mix the materials on the spot. For them, it's a bit more expensive because we've now kind of standardized our approach in the sense that we have the materials from Brussels that we know the best and that we can produce to a 99 percent liking of the former material. And every time you do a new chantier or a new construction site where you dig up excavated earth on the spot in a specific site, you have to kind of fine tune it again based on the spot. But there are people who really go towards this trajectory and who love the fact that you cannot go more local than this when you when you start excavating earth on the spot. And we and it's also a bit the nice part about about our tools and our infrastructure that they are mobile and our people are smart and they have a lot of expertise. So they can judge if earth is usable on the spot and if we can and if we can transform it. We do have to do some tests. Obviously, it's just logical towards them, towards the clients to to be sure that this is a good material that you can use. But it is it is a possibility. It's a minority of the cases that you have to immediately add that. But it's it's it's it's definitely a possibility. And it's actually the way that people used to build. So I'm wondering where are some of the use cases because once you have the bricks and the plaster, what is the typical use of the plaster? I can imagine it's for inside walls, very frequently the the bricks is it for inside walls as well. Do you can you use it for any structural case? What is kind of the the main case cases or use cases for your materials? Good question. The blasters are clay plaster are sensible to humidity so they can only be used in the inside. They can be used in bathrooms and kitchens, too, if they're not in direct contact with with weather. The blocks can be used as walls or parts of walls on a structural level from ground floor plus two floors. So you can then go in infinity, 10 floors or 15 floors with with compressed air blocks. And then you have Ramdirt, which is a bit the the queen of earth building in the sense of it's it's a mixture of gravel, clay and sand. And it kind of offers you the possibility to go in a lot of direction. You can do floor with Ramdirt. You can do design pieces with Ramdirt. You can do walls with Ramdirt. You can go very high with Ramdirt, 15 meters even. We once constructed a wall like that. But it is a fact that Ramdirt is very intensive. It's a bit like concrete. But in contrast to concrete, you have to ram it. You literally have to put force into it. And so the more high you go and the ticker your walls need to be, the more effort and the more intensive it becomes and the more expensive it obviously becomes for the contractor for him to decide how much days he will have to spend on the material. So there are a lot of possibilities. And for example, Ramdirt can also be used externally. You can you can use it as a kind of external facade. You cover it a bit more, but it's a bit more resistant to humidity than then, for example, clay plaster.  For example, I think this year, I'm not sure, obviously, the year is not finished yet. But I think we're going to clock at at about 600 tons. Of which the the large majority, I would say 85 up to 90 percent will probably be excavated earth. So it is it is substantial, but one also has to admit that I mean, we're super happy with not going to not going to to dish it or something like that. But we have to admit that with regard to the flux of the stream of earth, it's still little. And with regard to other bigger players in the construction sector, it's not that big. But it's really for us, we wanted to show that it was possible. And now when we found it, when it was founded, it was really in the end of 2018 and 2019, we launched the products. We wanted to show that it was possible. And now we've shown that it's more than possible, but it's really viable and that it's not that it's a good approach. And that's really what kind of drives us now. And so how do you see the I mean, so now we're talking about 600 tons. And you said, what was it to to million tons? So we're talking about 0.1 percent or 0.01 percent or something like that. That leaves, of course, the room for such, you know, such an important production. Of course, out of the construction materials that we use, not all of it can be satisfied by your materials. But of course, that leaves like a huge margin to grow. Is that the idea or how do you perceive as well the, you know, the future of such activities? Yeah, good question. I don't think we'll ever tap into the capabilities. And I think about half of the materials or half of the two million could be could be reused. I don't think we're ever going to get there. But I do see that there could be a very bright future for construction and building, especially within the city, but also with the periphery combined, that you there are today fantastic possibilities to decarbonize your materials to use structurally with as the strong points within your material, to use secondhand materials, for example, tiles in your bathroom to be water resistant and to combine that with a good quality energy, water pump, solar pump and solar panels. And you have the building that is as close as you can get to being carbon neutral as is possible. So you have the finished, you have the, there's a house in Molenbeek that I really like by Hannah Ekelmans and it's actually like an extension with straw bales, wooden structure, clay plaster and hemp creeds. So a mix of hemp and lime. And it's really probably the closest that you can get today to carbon neutral building with a very good quality and with a very healthy approach. And it's really, I think these kind of examples should be upscaled and really kind of augmented at the kind of city level where you can see that it is possible if the architect is really immensely persevering and really wants to find the right kind of material for the tool. But it's that kind of approach that we will need in the future. And as you mentioned, earth materials will not solve everything. They will not do insulation, for example, or hard materials that are necessary in the bathroom. But they are an important part of the mix and the mix is there with the bio-based insulation. Secondhand materials, wood and reused steel, for example. So you said also that the important role of first of all the creativity and the persistence of architects and of the client who want this type of project as a demonstrator as something that they want to as an agenda, perhaps, that they want to push forward. So because BC materials are totally different or a number of other actors are actually coming from the architectural world, how do you feel that this type of approaches are or are not taught or are and are not as attractive to new architects, to common architecture? Do they need to relearn many things in order to use these type of materials? How do you see this kind of future of, you know, the constructive practices? Good question, but a tough issue, because I've met students who were in their last year of Master and who said, yeah, we didn't get any class on sustainable material use or not on a material level. And for me, it's still a bit of a shock that in 2021 that still happens. But we have to admit that there is a very big openness at a lot of universities to mix the practices with the theory by really touching the materials, doing workshops with the rotor, with Sony and Wood Company, with us too, to really get into the material side of the issue. And I think the openness has been much bigger. And I think in general in society, it is a bit pushed forward by the Green Deal that made it very clear on a European level that we as a society think that we should be CO2 neutral by 2050. And there is no escaping it, not even for construction, because if you look at the financial part, a person who drives a diesel car, he will pay more taxes on his CO2 emissions proportionally than a concrete producer, because the concrete producers are exempt from CO2 emission rights, that they get the rights to pollute and because they are deemed a bit essential, which is maybe partially true, but very partially. And so we are seeing that in every sector, they have to make their accounts, they have to check like, what are we all doing? How do we produce this? How do we approach this? And the construction sector cannot escape this, because at some point, at transport, they will say, but why do we all have to do the efforts? Those guys in the construction sector are just burning coals, burning fossil fuel to produce whatever they want. And they have an emission grade of 40 percent. It's really insane. We're not going to go forward. So we're all now in the same boat with the sectors. And in that sense, it's pushing the construction sector to rethink its habits. And it's seeping through. And I think in some universities, they're really leading on this that that we have to ask the question like, what are we going to do with our material and how are we going to use it, including the transport? How far do we look for it? How expensive does it have to be? And that will also be a big part of the issue. Can we do an affordable circular, sustainable house for the average Joe in our countries? And can we can we build that? And how cheap or how acceptable should it be? It's it's really, I think, for some architects. It's it's it's sad that they hadn't haven't gotten that education when they starting now, because these questions are everywhere in the public tennis circular criteria will become more and more important. If you don't have the tools to approach that, it's much more difficult. Yeah, I really see that as well. They how how ill equipped and not necessarily because they don't want to. But because, you know, yeah, it feels like they're completely overwhelmed with, you know, the embodied emissions, the embodied energy, the the circularity of it. How do I grade between two different circularities? How do I make sure the technical capabilities of it? So I feel there's just so so much on on their shoulders. And at the same time, it's great that public administrations are pushing towards, let's say, circularity.  And at the same time, you know, that the mainstream architect that has absolutely no idea of what you're talking about and absolutely no idea how to pitch this to their own client. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a it's a it's a game of gaps and the gaps have to be transcended. And if you look in the past, yeah, in the 50s and the 60s, it was probably a bit of a dream period for an architect because you could practically construct whatever you want, wherever you wanted with whatever materials you wanted. And now you have the IBB for sure. You have to you have so many constraints in that that I think it's probably difficult to juggle all of these. And and our approach is a bit that you go towards a low tech approach where you I'm trying to remember the philosopher who said that the easy solution sometimes is the best. That is that the most straightforward solution is sometimes the best in energy dosing to in how much energy do you have to need? Do you need within within a building in that sense? I think that that can be a valid tool to work your way through the labyrinth of norming and rules within construction because otherwise, like you mentioned, it will be quite a burden for a lot of young architects to find their way through that to that to that labyrinth. Although, unfortunately, today, the common sense is not what rules neither the construction sector nor, you know, how we how the price reflects to to things if we see that construction materials, new construction materials cost less than we use construction materials. I don't know also how you position in terms of price. I don't know if if you also face challenges in terms of price compared to new materials. Also, this does not make sense, but still, you know, that's how it is today. You're you're really hitting the nail here because it's it's really the main point to make to every policymaker today is that we have to start pricing the externalities of how we produce, how we work. I think this week, it was in the newspaper that night, the the the brand shredded their shoes, their new shoes to avoid them having to offer them again to have the logistics to have to pay for the logistics or God beware that you that you would have to show them at reduced prices. This is the crazy world that we're in. And and and for example, the country producer that I mentioned to if we continue to say like they have exemptions to produce, you you create a very, very unequal level playing field where some get a lot of advantages and others none. I think for us, I don't want to complain too much about the price because I think our prices is quite reasonable and we are close to to market price. We're a bit more expensive in the sense that contractors with which we work, they ask their price and due to experience and effect, there are not that many contractors that work with earthbuilding, the total price for for for an application of clay, pastures or round dirt can be higher. That is true, especially round dirt is a lot higher because it is a very specific product and it has to be made in a very specific way. But I mean, if you look at the insulation level, do I think in Belgium practically 90 percent of the of the market is within the hands of push or equally may equally produced similarly made produced materials. If we don't change that fiscally, that the externalities are counted into we will continue to have this problem and it will be it will have to this will have to change. I mean, I think we we we can have a good market amongst people who are ecologically convinced and who can and we can pay for for material that we make. But if you really want to change the whole of society and the way that we build in the future, it will have to be mainstreamed that you pay for the externalities as a producer and the producer either will have to charge it to his clients or we he will have to do it in another way. In that sense, it's it's quite positive that the CO2 price per tonne has has quadrupled. I think it come from 15 euros to 60 euros this year. Yeah, it's it's it's a route to say maybe. But I mean, it will have to go higher. It will have to go towards 100 euros because with the carbon budget that we have left for the rest for the 30 years that are coming, it will have to become higher. And and every every mean that you kind of get out of that system, a part of it should be redistributed for socially just and equal initiatives. For example, social housing that can be renovated, CLT project, Community Land Trust project and that you really do the effort towards those who are less privileged to not make them pay the price. But it's it's it's also for policy makers. It's a lot of loops to jump through and that is that is quite the effort. But it's it's a certainty that we cannot accept that that the externalities go so unpunished and that they go so unpaid for as they are now. So I'm wondering, you know, Brussels, Flanders now, Wallonia as well, have or had ambitious circular economy programs. Within them, they also had, you know, call for projects where they funded numerous initiatives. I think you were part of the big circular initiatives. I don't know, once or twice. Do you feel that it really brings any support, at least to feel part of such a community and feel more or less reassured that the policy slash the government has a has a will into this? Or, you know, it's nice to get the extra cash, but at the end of the day, that doesn't change much. But I mean, what you mentioned is important in the sense that you have to have these starting subsidies. For example, the infrastructure that we have was partly built with the B circular price, and it is necessary because you cannot otherwise you cannot even start because the construction sector is so big and hegemonic in the sense that the big giants that have the best that have very tight margins but large volumes, they make a lot of cash. And so in that sense, their system is hard to disrupt because they have a constant flow. They have the clients and all. So it is very important that the government subsidizes the new initiatives in general, because innovation is important. And I think most of all in construction, where the innovation is sometimes really low, but in the government is sometimes like the seven headed beast where one where one minister does this and the other does that or where the other minister cannot change what has happened because the minister before and promised the sector that that wouldn't happen. And in that sense, I don't judge any specific ministers, but it is a fact that the externalities, if they are not calculated integrate into the price, we will still be fighting Goliath and maybe maybe we will win. But it's the same thing for other players, too, is that if you if you work in such a linear system, or most of our fiscal system is still linear while you're trying to push a circular initiative it's the odds are against you. And we shouldn't mince words about that. In that sense, I think it's really great in Brussels that you have this ecosystem, but on a wider federal and European level, things have to change on a fiscal level so that these kind of initiatives and we're not talking just about us. But for example, Roto has the same problem, too. And since their second hand tiles are sometimes more expensive than the Indian tiles that you can import really easily. In that sense, we have to change the system and not only the specific subsidies for X or for Y. So, yeah, I can imagine that through this ecosystem you have probably heard similar stories or similar challenges. We're all fighting, I guess, to have a storage space or common equipment or sometimes scales. Because I can imagine that you getting the scales to know what is the right mix of soil and earth to mix together is a lot to learn and you need to learn it from experimentation, from, I guess, experiment and fail. Do you feel that there is something useful or that there is something that exists to upscale a bit with all of these initial experimentations and then make them a bit more structural? Except, of course, I hear the argument for fiscality and for the right price, which I think it's, of course, one of the essential barriers. But I also feel that there is also a barrier of space, of being equipped and being skilled. Do you feel that these will exist or this is difficult? This is something that is getting better. What are your insights about this? Yeah, tough question in the sense that I don't know if you know Jan Janker, he's a professor, a Dutch professor on circular economy and initiatives. And I think in one of his studies, he analyzed that a lot of circular startups die after within the scale of five years. So the space issue, the market issue is quite a factor in that. And in that sense, I think within the city, it's always the question, we really love the city. We think it is our urban mind. We get inspired by it. We think that the market is also here because cities have to renovate a lot of their housing, a lot of their real estate. And so it's logical to be here. But at the same time, the price of real estate here is also much higher. And so you pay more per square meter. What I think is a really good approach is that you kind of combine and that you look for synergies within different companies to share spaces like the fab labs do or to kind of compartmentalize certain spaces and that you win in that department. And then the infrastructure, you always have to ask yourself, like, what do I really need? What I'm going to maximize? And we have the advantage of having a pretty low tech approach. And in that sense, in Sweden, for example, there's one of the biggest cement producers in the country. I think they have about 60 percent rate of the market. They had their environmental permit revoked this year. And the whole country was, yeah, it was like crushing. It was a really strange because there were people saying, you cannot do this. And then the judge said, but you're just passing several limits of what you do and you've been warned and you haven't done anything to remediate it. And then you could see a bit in the reactions of the plant that they said, but we're too important, you know, you cannot do this. And so in that sense, the easier the way you make your materials or the less you need, the more easy you make it for yourself to and making it possible within the city to find a place and an infrastructure.  So that's a bit of my suggestion, but there's a lot of other answers to these two in the sense that infrastructure is still hefty, that you have to have kind of refinancing. And that on the other side of the road, where the traditional producers are, they've already amortized their infrastructure and it's still polluting. But yeah, but they have their clients, they have their infrastructure. In that sense, the odds are uneven divided and it's a continuous fight. And yeah, I mean, as you say, we can imagine a country being, you know, uncapable of constructing just because there is one plan that is going down, we see that the resilience as well, how unresilient it is based on, you know, well, still, I guess concrete is or cement is relatively easy to be made, is relatively locally sourced a number of times. Still, you need to burn a number of things, though, to do it. So yeah, it also shows how we're not prepared to face these type of, you know, hegemonic structures. Yeah, there is one question. We discussed before as well, but which was, let's say, that when I discussed with Stefan on the wood cooperative, you know, back in the day, we had the information that wood came or what was the amount of wood that existed in Brussels and how much of it was actually exported to Asian markets. And that kind of made theoretically at least a perfect idea or a perfect case for creating a company or a cooperative. The same, I guess, for for BC Materials, there is a theoretical, excellent initiative, but someone needs to do it at the end of the day. And there we kind of saw the limits of research and the needs of practice. And I'm wondering, you know, how do you, is there any exchange that you usually do with research? How is that helpful? Do you use useful insights from research? And also, vice versa, I can imagine that researchers comes now to you to to understand what you have produced and what is the potential of what you have done. Well, I mean, it's really good that you question that you may get question because we do your studies, too, to estimate, for example, the amount of bricks and plaster used in Brussels and discharged stuff. And for us, it's really a constant interaction with researchers. Some of us are inspired by the researchers and by the builders themselves. And at the same time, we give some inspiration, or I hope to other researchers who are asking questions about LCA's in our materials and others. And I really think there's an interesting flow of research coming out that is that is pushed amongst others by the ETH, by the VUB, by the LB that is really hitting the nail on some departments and that are showing the perspective that are possible within our country, within Europe for a much cleaner and healthier building than we're doing right now. So it is really, really super interesting to see what happens. And if we can mention like a builder, not an architect, but yeah, I mean, Martin Arauch is very known for Ramdirt buildings. And it's really he turned it into something sexy that a lot of people had not considered thinking about or looking at. And it's really, yeah, those kind of figures are sometimes underestimated because not for every student in architecture school, Martin Arauch is a name that Norman Foster is for example. Yeah, so I don't know whether I can imagine that you have a different way of seeing the city now, seeing what is around you as a resource. I guess your job has made you a different person now. Do you see, is there anything that you see in the city that tells you, oh, this we should absolutely reuse in some way or another, a particular flow that you see that seems so undervalued, so much underused and yet nothing exists? It is for me, I maybe give two examples. If I may, it's the city hall of San Gilles, where there used to be a quarry. It's so difficult to imagine because it's a really beautiful neighborhood and that the quarry was actually there on the spot where it is now. And the houses were built with so sometimes you really you are walking on the ingredients of what is what is built around you. And the second thing, especially in Brussels, but it's it's also always a bit confrontational if you go to Italy or to other southern countries, the roofs are used as a space. And I mean here in Belgium and in Brussels, you have some examples, but you see a lot of black roofing that is just not not used and underused. And it's so it's such a valuable space. We always say that the space is so valuable. But if you see the roofing, it's underused and it's underappreciated. And for some of the BC Architects projects, we're also working on that of really valorizing the roofs and the spaces and the views that it gives and the possibility that it offers. I think, especially from a circular point of view, we have to maximize the space that we have and use it to to to public good.  That could be something interesting. You could have a specific, I don't know, the copper of wires. Your your mind starts to wander. And of course, this is so relative to to price, right? I mean, how we how expensive and how valuable resources. And so every time I do this exercise of. Well, of course, I mean, you know, in in our in our exercises, we kind of see what comes in, what goes out and what goes out. We have an idea of the sink today. We know how much carbon we have still left to to stay within the one point five to two degrees on the inside. We know that we have less and less materials, but at the same time, we could always have more if we substitute or if we dig deeper with lesser concentrations and with more energy. So, you know, sometimes we we see perhaps the sink as being the limiting factor. So the CO2 emissions rather than what we have in front of us. But yeah, these are can absolutely. The general questions I always put in my mind. I don't know how to to answer them. I think I think what but it's also a bit of communication. And sometimes the talks about climate change and the challenges of construction are super depressing. I mean, we have to admit it is that you see that it's not going fast enough. You see in general that that we are counting on negative offsetting and it's crazy to see the kind of calculation that we make to kind of make it match with one point five. But on the other side, you could also say that there is a very positive future potentially lying ahead of us, where we're really re appreciating the stuff that is already here, the tools that are already here, that we have all this production capacity, but that we're just not using it in a very, very clean way. And that there is a future ahead of us that that will be healthier and that there will be less air pollution and that there will be more material use and less of a dump than than we then then you see at the professional container park right now. I mean, it's a super depressing place, but there are the tools to kind of in that sense, what I mentioned with the the exemplary building in Molenbeek. It's it's really that's what I think that we should try to scale is that kind of approach that kind of thinking, which is not obvious. No, it's not it's not it's not easy, but it is possible. And and that's really what we should be aiming for. Yes, organic agriculture. I don't think that agriculture was such a ripe, you know, sector to innovate as well beforehand. And still, I mean, now it's it's normal to find in all supermarkets, organic food, which which wasn't the case like 10 years ago. So I don't think that's a big issue is it's just a matter of habit. I guess I don't know. So I'm wondering, where are some of your plans for 2022? I think I read somewhere that perhaps you're wondering of exporting your your model to to other places. Well, do you see BC materials being in each European capital and and doing the same thing where we're having a big plan or project where we we want to aim for reusing the excavated earth of the subway tree line in Brussels and transform it into materials that could actually be used for certain construction projects. We think it has a lot of potential and we don't necessarily want a department of BC in every European country. But we think it would be great if the method would be there in every in every big city in I mean, Amsterdam, for example, has has also a very donut policy. They want to reuse much more what they already have. They also did the subway line a few years ago, but there is so many earths moving in the cities that is not used. Is that the potential is there and it's not only here in Brussels. It's not that our earth is so much more special than elsewhere. So we do sometimes export our expertise to different cities. And we have some projects going on of which some are already confirmed and some not. But for example, with the subway project, the ladies signed a kind of letter of intent. They're really enthusiastic about the ID, but we'll see how it how it will work out. But I mean, if we can export the IDs and export from time to time, a project where we say like we can do this with local earth because we're not planning to export the Brussels earth would be. Then I think we but I mean, even now we already have super interesting projects coming up in 2022. And we don't want to grow to grow. But it would be wonderful if a lot of other cities take up the ID and start reusing the materials that they have. Perhaps a last question we generally ask is, do you have any recommendations for for, you know, more inspiration either about the topic or something that you saw recently read recently and that was super impactful to you and you would like to share with us? Well, I would definitely recommend the listeners to continue listening to this podcast, which is very inspiring. For me, I really try to focus a bit on the positive things that are happening in general, because sometimes it's a bit of a hurricane of bad news. And it's just that you have to focus on the on the real stuff that you're doing and the inspiring projects that that you that there are present, for example, like the project that I mentioned in Molenbeek and a lot of others. I'm not really thinking about any medium for a moment, but you have some media and some people influencers who post a lot on climate positive news in the sense that they say, like we're facing a really tough battle, but this is what happened in the world that is positive towards towards the climate. And I think in that sense, and I hope that, for example, with the whole coal discussion and energy discussion, is that at some point the mechanical breakthrough of renewable energy will be so big and it will be at such a low cost. The development there is as I think is quite comforting is that it is replacing in a lot of countries the standard way of of of heating spaces or cooking stuff just by by by, for example, solar mirrors, which is a really cool concept video on it recently. And people are just cooking with with the combination of mirrors, actually, and it's really it's it's so low tech and cool that that you're like, wow, I mean, we are still on gas. We are still cooking on gas in Belgium, like most people and in other places, you can do it in a much clearer by using the natural heat that that has been given to us by Mother Son, you know, so there's a lot and a lot of interesting and positive initiatives going on. And sometimes you have to feed into that and sometimes you're energized by the bad stuff that's happening. And I think that's a bit of a mix that you have to look for. Well, thanks so much, Anton. I hope next time we meet, you're going to you're going to tell me more exciting news about new projects and new. Success stories. Thanks so much, Anton. And thanks, everyone, as well to listening until the end. I hope you liked this video. Please do share it with people that are curious about using low take approaches in the construction sector. And we'll see you in two weeks for another conversation. Thanks a lot, everyone.


What's up everybody Dr. Ali Hader interventional cardiologist. Thank you for stopping by to the channel You know, I didn't even think I'd have to be doing a video about this but despite what a lot of us are doing on social media to try and Dispel some of these myths that are out there We're still seeing the same questions asked over and over again and all sorts of misinformation out there So we're going to do a little COVID-19 vaccine true or false. All right question one The COVID-19 vaccine is not that efficacious That is completely false. In fact the first two vaccines to obtain EUA approval in the United States was the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer biotech vaccine. Okay, and these vaccines had 90 94 percent and 95 percent efficacy Take a look at this data You don't have to be the statistician to look at this graph to figure out that the vaccine was way more efficacious than placebo. Now, yes 95 percent is not a hundred percent But I put this 95 percent efficacy into perspective This is one of the most effective vaccines that we've had. This is on par with like chicken pox and measles out of the 32,000 Patients that were actually vaccinated between the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine trials There was only one patient in the Pfizer trial that had severe COVID There was zero in the Moderna trial and that one patient in the Pfizer trial was not even hospitalized They were deemed severe because their oxygen saturation dropped below a certain percentage If you want to learn a little bit more about the mRNA vaccines and their mechanism check out my last video here I'll link it up above. All right next question true or false I don't need the vaccine because I'm healthy and COVID-19 has a 99% survival rate again. That is false Firstly everybody seems to focus on this 99% survival rate now whatever the actual number is It doesn't matter because it's not just about the people who die not to mention that over 400,000 people have already died and there's many more to come But the people who survive a lot of these patients are not completely normal If you're really sick and you're in the ICU coming out of that alone is going to deem you sort of a lower functional status than two Once before not to mention that COVID seems to have these other sort of lingering symptoms that have been occurring in a lot of folks And those can be very severe symptoms or they can be even just mild symptoms But effector quality of life even in young folks I can't tell you the number of young folks I've had who've come in with these weird symptoms of palpitations fatigue brain fog In fact, I did a video about the COVID long-haul or lingering symptoms I'll click that above as well and the other part of it Even if you don't get very sick or die with COVID you could actually spread it to somebody else who may again That's how a pandemic works. It spreads from person to person not everybody's gonna die or get very sick But each of us are part of the puzzle and if we don't all play a role in this then we're never gonna get out of it We also just don't know which people are gonna get that sick again We know that the older you are the sicker you are at baseline the more likely who you're gonna get severely ill But there are still some young folks out there getting sick We all us physicians who take care of COVID patients have Anecdotal Experiences with very young folks and their 30s 40s 50s who are ending up either dead or severely critically ill Sort of like a game of Russian roulette We just don't know who's gonna get really ill with COVID and look if you're young and you're healthy That means you want this pandemic to end Don't you because I for one want to be able to go to a restaurant where I'm sitting elbow to elbow Somewhere in the East Village at my favorite sushi joint I want to be able to be able to go into a bar and fight through people to get to order my drink Just because I want to and I know maybe I want to go to a music show on a concert These are the things that are normal in society So if you do want to do those kinds of things and you better get vaccinated Okay, next question true or false getting the COVID vaccine puts you at risk for possible infertility now This again is completely false. This was all based on this idea that was proposed on a thread in reddit and that the Antibodies that are created by the mRNA vaccine which are basically antibodies to the spike protein could in fact cross-react and affect placenta Placenta is obviously something that's critical in pregnancy now a couple of problems with that number one The placenta is created well after you've already pregnant So it wouldn't cause infertility if this was actually true it could potentially cause miscarriages. Okay number two They're talking about a completely different protein Even if there's similarities antibodies will only interact with something that's identical to the sequence It's supposed to interact with okay, and thirdly this antibody response that they're proposing would also occur in the setting of COVID infection because the spike protein antibodies created when you have COVID are the same as the mRNA vaccines create That means that we should be seeing all these miscarriages occurring in patients who've had COVID We're not hearing anything about that so again This was a sort of a baseless theory without much science behind it of course because this has all been all over the media We're gonna be watching this just like we are every other adverse event But we have not seen any signal if you want to dive a little deeper into the whole pregnancy and infertility issues with COVID-19 Vaccine check out this video by dr. Mike and mom and dr. Jones really great. I'll link it above All right next question the COVID-19 vaccine will not reduce to transmission of COVID to other people now Technically this is again false and that's because we don't know the answer to that and that's because we just don't have the data Now if this vaccine does what it's supposed to do and from by all accounts what we're seeing There is no question that it should absolutely reduce transmission However, we just don't have that data yet because it takes time to gather that So I from one will be surprised if we find that this vaccine in fact does not reduce transmission as well But again, we don't have the robust evidence to make that claim So we won't we got to maintain some scientific humility unlike a lot of things that we've seen during this pandemic okay, true or false the Vaccine will not protect us against these new strains that we're hearing about out of South Africa and other areas now again That particular statement is false and again. It's because we just don't know yet now so far Some of the preliminary data has shown that this vaccine should likely protect us against those new strains There is certainly a possibility that a strain will develop at some point that could evade the vaccine So we have to be really cautious. We have to watch that but remember Antibodies can be created to multiple different epitopes on a protein So just because there's a new strain does not mean it's altered the protein that the antibodies Are supposed to react to nonetheless if a new strain were to develop that could evade the vaccines Then the beauty of the mRNA technology is that we could just print out a brand new vaccine to account for that Now the more important thing to remember is the best way to avoid a new strains to even develop from the first point is to vaccinate as many people as possible because Vaccines replicate and they mutate that's what they do So the less opportunity we give them to replicate and mutate the better the chances are we won't see these new strains and the answer to that is Herd immunity and that's going to only be facilitated through Vaccination alright, so that's it for now I'm sure we can talk about hundreds of questions. If you want to learn more about COVID-19 and vaccines check out my Instagram page I did a couple of good IG lives in there that are in the IGTV section check that out if you're on Clubhouse look for me there We're also having a lot of sessions out there to talk about the vaccines and fighting the misinformation, so Definitely subscribe and hit the bell notifications if you like this video and hopefully see you guys soon