Planting an urban forest to restore a wasteland
This project, led by the EPF Hauts-de-France, also includes the City of Lens and the Lens-Liévin Urban Community, in collaboration with the Hauts-de-France Region through the Regional Forestry Plan. Unlike a natural forest, the urban forest is the result of a design. The EPF has designed this forest with a multidimensional logic: ecological, landscape, sensory, well-being and educational. ECT makes it happen.
A project driven by the principles of the circular economy
As soon as the buildings were demolished, the EPF Hauts-de-France supported the project by implementing a circular waste economy. The renaturation of the site is not only financed by the input of excavated soil but also involves multiple recycling actions.
3 main recycling actions:
- The circular economy of excavated soil, ECT’s expertise: the reuse of inert soil from local construction sites is an opportunity to restore degraded land and act to transform the site.
- Use the neighbouring site as a nursery for the urban forest: Trees and shrubs were removed and replanted on the site of the future urban forest.
- Recycling for biodiversity: Some of the litter was reused as caves for hibernating bats. Sand brought in from the old racks of the nearby waste disposal site will provide microhabitats for psammophilous wild bees and other sand-loving insects.
3 questions to the project owner, EPF Hauts-de-France
Guillaume Lemoine, Development Officer and Biodiversity and Ecological Engineering Referent of the EPF Hauts-de-France, details the implementation of a circular economy policy for the ecology of this project.
The urban forest project, carried out in partnership with the EPF and Lens town council, has a strong exemplary and demonstrative dimension in the ecological treatment of the region’s wasteland. As a result, it has been awarded the Euralens 2022 label by the Pôle Métropolitain de l’Artois.
