CITY SOIL - FOOD WASTE TO FOOD GROWING

WHY?

THE ENVIRONMENT – IT’S COMPLEX AND OVERWHELMING

But we have a plan and it’s simple: Nutrient recycling - and the answer has been under our noses for millennia.

Our idea began with reimagining local waste and then turning that into a local resource to nourish local soil and nurture neighbourhoods!

Soil is sexy. It feeds us, it waters us and it makes sure we can take breath each day – but we take it for granted.

Covid lockdowns gave us time as a neighbourhood to evaluate what actually matters. Understanding the core shared values amongst all the communities around us have lead to our shared action.

Local waste is only waste because of a lack of imagination. If local organic resources were managed more efficiently if would enable us to all thrive locally – and we all want to thrive.

City Soil Lab is putting biology back where it needs to be.

What?

City Soil Lab is an urban food waste-to-neighbourhood soil organic matter pilot taking place in a basement on the Dorset Estate, E2, right in the heart of Shoreditch, Tower Hamlets, London.

By GROW Foundation and Silas Science.

We are collaborating with Tower Hamlets on dynamic solutions to their environmental targets, which is soon to affect every neighbourhood.

Over 6 months we will sort through, test out and learn from a diverse array of local waste streams. We’re collecting from a trial group of 51 residents and 18 businesses to gather and understand the problem more fully.

After analysis we will use beneficial bacteria to turn this organic waste into carbon-rich soil to revive unused and undernourished plots of land within our neighbourhood so we can build baseline biodiversity resilience from the ground up.

These local gardens. (DEM: drinkable, edible, medicinal) will enable an abundance of local benefits, creating more beautiful local spaces with currently wasted resources and redirecting them for cleaner air, water holding capacity and local ecosystem services.

PUTTING BIOLOGY BACK WHERE IT NEEDS TO BE

HOW?

We work with residential and restaurant food waste collections, bring them back to the Lab and sort and analyse them for optimal outcomes.

STEP 01

Weekly food waste collections from our 51 residents. Daily collections for our 18 local businesses, all done on electric e-cargo bikes.

STEP 02

Characterisation, profiling and sorting, a 12-week anaerobic fermentation and aeration process turns food waste into carbon rich soil organic matter.

STEP 03

After testing, application on local test and trial plots reviving neglected areas of land whilst nourishing our estate (DEM Gardens coming in 2024)

STEP 04

We will use DEM gardens to showcase efficient use of local resources to build a thriving neighbourhood and green local circular economies.

SCALING UP BY SCALING OUT

City Soil Lab is a GROW foundation project and part of a wider environmental plan by Silas Science. We work together to put biology back where it needs to be by connecting urban organic waste streams to rural soil organic matter shortages.

Cities are solutions.

Waste lays the base to build an entirely different place!