Culture
Amsterdam Road Tests a Pollution-Zapping Flower
The “supercharged” honeysuckle called the Green Junkie could be a part of the Dutch city’s scheme to rid its air of carbon emissions.
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.”