Marieke (33) and Lisa (29) tell what it is like to live in a circular  district.

Marieke: “It might sound like a bit of a cliché, but every morning when I open the curtains and look at the vegetable garden in our shared courtyard, I feel privileged. It is a privilege that I, together with Lisa, can live affordably and comfortably without placing an extra burden on the planet. By the way, we designed that communal courtyard together with local residents.”

Lisa: “We always start the day in our sustainably built kitchen, with a cup of coffee, a glass of water and the newspaper. It’s lovely to start the day so peacefully. It has been fall for a while now, but it is still very pleasant inside. Wonderful, such an energy-efficient home. It ensures that our monthly expenses remain low, while we can comfortably get through the winter. And as for that drinking water: in our home, we save up to 45 per cent of drinking water. In fact, we have a circular water system in the neighborhood where flushing water is recovered and purified. No toilet here is flushed with drinking water anymore.

Not only our kitchen is sustainably built by the way, so too is the bathroom. In fact, our entire house is made of circular and often bio-based materials. You also notice this in the attractively low maintenance costs. We have a two-story home. That is more than enough for the two of us. Our neighbors, a family with two children, have three stories. The homes are largely modular and can therefore be adapted fairly easily over time, should you wish to do so. The resulting diversity in the neighborhood makes for a pleasing sight.”

Marieke: “During my lunch break, I walk around the neighborhood. A high-tech neighborhood, but you don’t really notice that. It’s green, there’s plenty of water and the vegetable garden is always well-kept. Yet we make full use of technology here every day. For instance, during my walk around the pond, which is secretly also part of the water purification system, I pass by the place where all the residents jointly generate energy and I see that biological waste is being processed.”

“When I have parked the car in the parking hub in the evening after a busy day and arrive home, I see that Lisa is already busy cooking. The vegetables she uses were given to us by our across-the-road neighbor Maria and come from our neighborhood vegetable garden. Here in the neighborhood, we grow quite a bit of our own food. This way we can be sure that our food is healthy and pure, without added flavorings and fragrances. And that it hasn’t travelled an unnecessarily long way before reaching our table. When I take the first bite of the dish, I think: reducing your own footprint is not at all difficult, instead it’s rather tasty.”