● place
Ámsterdam
4 practices
0local
3subnational
0national
1systemic
Practices in Ámsterdam
Repair CaféFree community gatherings where volunteers with technical know-how help neighbours repair broken items (clothing, appliances, bicycles, toys, furniture) instead of throwing them away. Born in Amsterdam in 2009 during the financial recession, the model combines waste reduction, preservation of repair knowledge and neighbourhood social cohesion. Stichting Repair Café International supports the network: in the Netherlands there are about 700 cafés repairing around 150.000 items a year, and the movement operates in some 50 countries with several thousand cafés in total.United Repair CentreNon-profit social enterprise founded in Amsterdam in 2021 that repairs garments at industrial scale for brands (Patagonia, The North Face, Arc'teryx, Lululemon, Decathlon, Levi's) while employing and training people facing barriers to the labour market, mostly refugees and migrants. In 2024 it repaired some 29.545 garments (avoiding ~159 tonnes of CO2) and by July 2025 had accumulated 72.000 repairs. 75% of its workforce are newcomers with refugee backgrounds. It launched the United Repair Academy with ROC van Amsterdam to train repairers.Wormenhotels / Le CompostierNetwork of 'worm hotels' (wormenhotels): purpose-designed community boxes that house thousands of worms and turn neighbours' organic waste (gft-afval) into compost, closing the nutrient loop within the neighbourhood. Rowin Snijder (Le Compostier) has driven the model since 2014, with the first wormenhotel on Frans Halsstraat (De Pijp, Amsterdam); the Amsterdam municipality adopted a standard design. By June 2024 Amsterdam had about 200 hotels (with ~300 people on the waiting list), each serving up to 30 households, and the model has been replicated in at least 11-12 Dutch cities (Rotterdam, The Hague, Eindhoven, Haarlem, Hilversum).DECODE Amsterdam (data sovereignty pilots)European H2020 project (grant 732546, 2017-2019) that developed technology to give citizens back control over their personal data. In Amsterdam, Waag and the City piloted trials with Attribute Based Credentials (e.g. proving you are over 18 without revealing your identity). A parallel pilot in Barcelona integrated a module into Decidim. Based on the results and on Waag's Policy Framework for Digital Identity, Amsterdam decided to develop an operational implementation of ABC.