Flat Packed, Vertical Farming Urban Agriculture
During these uncertain times of Coronavirus Plantimate is privileged to be able to assist in the effort of providing the health services with much needed Protective Personal Equipment (PPE). Honoured to be part of this 3D printing community trying to help!
Check out Dezeen’s article highlighting how building with cork has been used in a variety of applications within design and construction. At Plantimate we believe in the holistic benefits this product can bring to projects given its light weight, resistance to rot, good thermal quality and waste saving measure from the industrial process!
Upon a recent visit to the evacuated towns around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster a picture of this abandoned green house used by the former residents of the town struck a chord. At Plantimate we are developing a food growing system independent of the surroundings so as to avoid issues with soil contamination, this example in an area with high levels of radioactive soil is an extreme example but given communities are starting to move back it only inspires us to work harder on Plantimate and make it as accessible to as many people as possible.
Check out the Trillion Tree Campaign! Totally inspiring to hear this teen talk about his goal of aiming to plant a billion trees. Now aiming for a trillion trees! We had the pleasure to hear Felix Finkbeiner talk and it only encourages us at Plantimate to keep pursing sustainable solutions! Finkbeiner is 19—and Plant-for-the-Planet, the environmental group he founded, together with the UN’s Billion Tree campaign, has planted more than 14 billion trees in more than 130 nations. The group has also pushed the planting goal upward to one trillion trees—150 for every person on the Earth.
Always exciting to see passive solar energy used in greenhouses in new and old ways. Check out this article explaining the evolution and improvements of solar gain techniques in Chinese greenhouses. Expected to cover 1.5 million hectares by 2020 this had massive potential in reducing carbon foot print whilst providing access to healthy food to local communities!
Embracing new technologies to rapidly plant trees in hard to reach locations whilst driving down labor costs this project offers a solution. Check out this exciting proposal making use of 3D scanning of terrain, algorithms and the firing of seed pods into the ground from drones.
‘The system’s engineers estimate that their method is about 10 times faster and only 20% of the cost of hand planting. And because there is no heavy machinery involved, it’s possible to plant in hard-to-reach areas that have no roads or steep, inaccessible terrain.The BioCarbon team has tested its technology in various locations and recently trialed reseeding historic mining sites in Dungog, Australia.’
Plant based milk is a good way to see how plants can be utilised in other food markets, in particularly the dairy market. Plants can play a positive role in helping to minimise some of the more negative aspects of dairy production. With changing consumer trends how can organic dairy milk be used in different ways? Read this article for a short and interesting insight.
With the recent disaster relief efforts in the Philippines after Typhoon Tembin in December it is worth highlighting some of the great work being done in disaster relief shelter design. Check out these eight examples ranging from the hi-tech to simple and effective to conceptual. At Plantimate we believe such shelters to help people recover from traumatised events can be supplemented with food growing to nurture the recovering bodies as well as the mind.
Check out this great project: Polar Permaculture is bringing fresh food and permaculture to the harsh climate of Svalbard in the Arctic Circle. At Plantimate we believe that improving the ability to grow food in some of the world’s harshest environments is essential if access to healthy food for as many people as possible is to be realised. This project is a great example of such an effort:
“On Svalbard, the soil is extremely poor and unsuited for growing food, so if it were not for the worms and compost, soil would literally have to be shipped in.”
Check out this article and the aspiration to legitimise informal settlements: reignited debate about whether urban development should aim at gentrification or helping the growing ranks of people forced to live on the street and in the periphery.
We at Plantimate have been involved in research regarding a partnership between business and informal settlements in Sao Paulo and where collaboration on both sides may be found. Check it out here.
