One week ago, the BENU village officially opened their new vegetarian restaurant – which is entirely composed of waste. In the BENU Sloow restaurant, all furniture and equipment is recycled and the food has been rescued; the cooks use only ingredients that would have been thrown away. On Local Matters today, we have a look behind the scenes of the BENU village.

Already a few years ago, Georges Kieffer has started the construction of an ecovillage in the city of Esch. Behind the trainline, next to the French border, he and his team have some space to build the socalled BENU village. The BENU village is constructed out of reused materials, Containers for the main construction of the rooms and buildings. There are some office spaces on the first floor, a sewing studio where the employees design and create new clothes out of old garments. Soon, there will be a small flat for travellers and a carpenter workshop in the side building.

The philosophy of BENU consists not only of using mainly environment friendly materials, the aim is to use less. The main point of this project however does not even consist in the eco village or the benefit for the environment and social living in the neighborhood. These are all positive effects. But the main goal is replicability. Georges Kieffer and his co-workers try out what works, what doesn’t and want to transmit this knowledge. The Benu village opens their new restaurant next month. Pass by to have lunch and above all to get to know what happens there.