The new flowers sprouting up along the busy President Kennedylaan thoroughfare in Amsterdam are not decorative. Rather, they’re experimental: these honeysuckle flowers, encased individually in plastic tubes, are being tested by a group of Dutch scientists to see how efficiently they can clear the smoggy air around them.
At the TEDxAmsterdam conference in November 2014, the Dutch engineer Ton van Oostwaard pitched a radical vision for fighting pollution in the city. The founder of the Dutch environmental organization MyEarth, van Oostwaard described how a “supercharged” honeysuckle, planted alongside Amsterdam’s busiest roads, could suck up pollution particles from the air and create “a future-proof landscape for generations to come.”
