Nova
Innova

You proved it works. Did you continue developing those projects?

Yes, after gaining that knowledge myself, we started collaborating with scientists from Wetsus and Southampton Universit . We worked really hard at it. Seven years later, we now have a cell that works amazingly well. My minor project has evolved into ‘POND,’ an initiative designed to give water a voice.

POND features floating domes that use color lighting to visually represent water quality. They create a connection with the water while functioning as mood lighting at the same time. The bacteria eat the organic material in the water, and our battery cells generate the power the sensors need to capture various kinds of data, such as temperature, pH values, oxygen content, and electrical conductivity. That data is then expressed by a light color.

We also developed ‘Living Light’ in co-creation with Plant- E, who developed the cell. Rather than using bacteria that feed on organic material in the water, we use the process of photosynthesis in plants to generate electricity. In doing so, we’re literally creating living light. We’ve developed a table lamp, but we’re also already lighting up city parks in this way.

Let’s talk about POND first. Who do you measure and show water quality for?

POND is a four-year development project together with several water boards and Rotterdams Weerwoord. This is a real asset for water boards, who can monitor water quality around the clock, making it much easier to act quickly when climate conditions shift. 

This year we’re creating five new POND installations – in Utrecht, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Delft, and Voorne aan Zee. We also have a grant for a three-year partnership with Deltares  to improve our machine learning for improved monitoring of blooming blue-green algae and other nutrients in the water. And we’ll be working on communicating and educating people on the topic. 

It’s a participatory project that improves awareness on how we can take better care of our water. At the moment, we often consider that the job of a water board or municipality, but it’s a job we should all feel responsible for.

Living Light uses the photosynthesis process of plants to generate light. Tell us more.

Plants use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to make nutrients. Some of these nutrients are used for themselves, and some nutrients enter the soil through their roots. These nutrient residues are broken down by bacteria in the soil, which release electrically charged particles, which we use to generate light. 

Living Light started as a consumer lamp: a houseplant in a glass bell jar with a cell generating electricity. When you touch the plant, tiny LED lights are activated. How much energy is generated depends on the well-being of the plant. Take good care of the plant and it will provide more light. 

Most people are amazed when they see this lamp, and its design works really well. However, we also realized that the lamp only works well if that one single plant is doing well. An entire ecosystem is obviously much more robust than one plant. This is why we broadened our thinking to offer ‘Living Light – Park,’ which uses the same process to illuminate green spaces as a replacement for bright lampposts. 

You just returned from Costa Rica. Were you lighting up the jungle over there?

Yes, I was testing our cells there. I’ve long dreamed of testing our technology in a tropical region. In theory, it should perform much better there than in the Netherlands, due to higher temperatures and more ancient, richer ecosystem. On top of that, tropical countries often also have more limited access to electricity. 

We have started a collaboration with PachaMama, an eco-community and center for spiritual transformation. Life there is all about living in harmony with nature. The paths are very dark, forcing residents and visitors to use head lamps or flashlights. Their high-intensity beams are disruptive to biodiversity, like streetlights. 

There is a river and a lagoon. We tested our cells there to see how quickly they start up and how much energy they generate. We brought Living Light – Park lamps as a demo, as they can also be connected to water. And they work! Our cells start generating electricity two times faster as in the Netherlands.

Will you be lighting up more parks and jungles?

We have various requests. It’s amazing that there’s already so much interest. But installations are still expensive, which makes them hard to finance for a lot of interested parties. We need a few large projects to achieve scalability.  

In our current projects, for example, we’re still opting for 3D printing, although the lights have been designed to eventually be injection-molded in large batches. That’s much more cost-efficient.  

We’re looking for partners used to working with big budgets, like governments looking to replacelampposts , for example. Because lampposts also cost a fortune. And we’re also looking at the sustainable hospitality sector: eco-resorts, retreat and wellness centers, museum gardens. They have an opportunity to lead the way and set a new global standard for ecotourism.

What are your plans for the future?

For now, we’ve decided to focus on POND to heal our connection to water. Few people know that only 1% of Dutch waters meet European standards. This is a tremendous problem that we can only solve by working together – with each other and with nature.

On top of that, we’re working on a new design for the consumer market: a sustainable candle replacement. I love candles, but sadly, they’re unhealthy and polluting, emitting carbon dioxide and particulate matter. And I’m not a fan of fake candles.

Our proposal is a table lamp with Living Light-powered bacteria that you keep feeding to receive light. You can give them organic waste streams, such as a scoop of coffee grounds, something most of us have in our house. We’ll probably roll that out in hotels and restaurants first, but eventually, we also want to make it available to consumers.

Looking ahead ten years, I hope generating electricity through bacteria will have become standard. But Nova Innova is a design studio first and foremost. Ideally, I’d like to take pioneering technologies out of the lab and develop them into real-world solutions – to prove it can be done.