The highly anticipated opening of the new Helderberg Nature Reserve eco-building took place on World Environment Day and is now open to visitors.
Helderberg, South Africa (09 June 2022) – The centre at the Helderberg Nature Reserve is an off-grid multi-purpose centre for the City of Cape Town and Cape Nature. The new building is a beacon of what can be done using repurposed items such as unrecyclable plastics, which are placed in EcoBricks and tyres.
Peter McIntosh, the founder of the Natural Building Collective, was the brains behind the project and shared the incredible progress of a building at the Helderberg Nature Reserve, which was built using 8000 EcoBricks and 900 truck tyres.
The City of Cape Town recently celebrated the opening of the building. In commemorating World Environmental Day on 5 June 2022, the City’s Executive Mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis and Deputy Mayor, Alderman Eddie Andrews, opened the City’s Helderberg Environmental Centre, a new state-of-the-art green sustainable green centre located at the Helderberg Nature Reserve in Somerset West.
The setting of the reserve on the slopes of the Helderberg, overlooking False Bay, makes it an ideal location to teach communities in and around Somerset West about the Western Cape’s plant and animal kingdom and our impact on it. As such, staff at the reserve identified the need for an environmental education centre where school groups and visitors can be accommodated.
The Helderberg Environmental Centre is a success story of how alternative construction methods and sustainable design thinking can be achieved.
“The new Helderberg Environmental Centre is truly a magnificent building and provides the perfect setting for the various environmental education programmes the City’s nature reserves offer schools and interest groups. This centre provides us with a practical example of what a green City facility can look like. The project as a whole has proved just how beneficial implementing green construction practices can be, especially if one considers the amount of semi-skilled EPWP job opportunities that were created to assist with the material selection and specific green construction techniques,” said the City of Cape Town Executive Mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis.
“I am excited about the learners and various groups that will be visiting and benefiting from this facility going forward. The message we would like to get across this World Environmental Day is to ensure our youth understand the importance of biodiversity in Cape Town. The environmental education here at the Helderberg Environmental Centre is a beautiful example of a sustainable building. Protecting our natural assets, our coastline and biodiversity, protected areas and nature reserves is pivotal in ensuring our collective wellbeing.”
Visitors will be able to see the building as soon as they arrive at the Helderberg Nature Reserve because it sits at the entrance, near the parking lot.
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