Circular food: crops from digested waste in a controlled environment
2020
Stoknes, Ketil
The food we eat can have a huge environmental impact. Steaks, tomatoes and bread are typically farmed and transported using fossil resources, while nutrients are lost and much of the product is wasted on its way to our plates. One way to meet this challenge is to combine biowaste treatment with food cultivation in closed-loop ecosystems. This has been on the agenda of space agencies such as NASA and ESA for decades; to live on Mars, this is the only way. The good news is that this also can be done on Earth. An increasingly popular way to treat industrial and household food waste is through “anaerobic digestion”, from which the output is fuel gas, CO2 and organic residues. These streams can be connected to controlled environments, such as greenhouses and mushroom farms, to produce sustainable crops. Circular food investigates how the digester residue can be converted to provide crops with both fertiliser and growing medium. The methods are based on natural microbiology and focus on practical techniques for commercial growers. In addition to developing a complete circular system, the study found the optimal way to grow both button mushrooms and vegetables on digester residue, how to remove toxic heavy metals using mushrooms, and how spent mushroom compost can improve plant growth.
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