Waste
Consumables
- Where safe, reuse tubes and identity tags
- Use reusable pots. Clean by soaking in Kleengrow and then wash out with water hose.
If very concerned, pots can be autoclaved.
For growing microalgae grown in organic Carbon sources, use 5L plastic water bottles and incubator flasks. There’s good light penetration. Sterilize with bleach.
- Used at KU Leuven
(These are 2L bottles, but same idea - Photo Credit: Dr. Christine Morrison]
Gloves
If safe, consider not wearing gloves
Soil
Almost every commercial available potting mix contains sphagnum peat moss. Unfortunately, it’s harvested unsustainably - destroying centuries-old carbon-sink bogs and releasing CO2 into the air, and destroying wetlands which are habitat for a diverse range of wildlife.
Choose peat-free options. One of the most popular alternatives is coconut coir - it is the husk fiber of the coconut and is considered a waste byproduct of the coconut industry.
Coir can hold 10x its own weight in water and is dehydrated and sold to you as small bricks or bales. Coir is mainly shipped from Southeast Asia, so there is some disagreement on it’s overall sustainability, but it is more sustainable than peat.
Researchers at Auburn University and the University of Arkansas confirmed that coir was an on par soil to peat. Similar to peat, coir is low in nutrients.
Coir is less acidic than peat and often a bit more expensive. You can save money by making your own potting mix. Try to buy in bulk (and share with others) to reduce shipping footprint. Common combinations include:
1 part compost
2 parts coconut coir
1 part builder’s (sharp) sand
1 part top soil, bone meal, vermicompost, fish emulsion, alfalfa meal, etc. (optional)
You can also look for “reduced-peat” commercial blends. Do not choose blends that only say “environmentally friendly” or “organic”. 90% of the time, that’s just greenwashing.
Fertilizer
Avoid use of chemical fertilizers. Consider Compost teas (e.g. EcoTea). These are aerated water solution with various food sources added to compost to promote growth of benefical organisms.
Other
Compost all of your waste
Energy
LEDs
Plant growth is very energy intensive. The lights are on all day and night and have a significant impact on the carbon footprint of the work.
Plants
For many industrially produced crops, there are already growth LEDs developed for the agricultural markets. However, if your plants are not widely grown in the agricultural sector, or you are doing specific comparisons, check out Valoya for Plant growth room LEDs and Conviron UK for lighting arrays. They’ve done a lot of research with the University of Cambridge (Martin Howes) to ensure that these LEDs produce the same wavelengths as the standard fluorescent lights. They designed the LEDs to attain comparable plant growth, biomass, CO2 uptake, time to flowering and seeding, etc., when compared to traditional fluorescent tubes. Using LEDs saves 60% of the electricity and generates less waste heat.
Algae
There’s also LEDs designed for Algae. Again with Martin Howes at the University of Cambridge, Infors developed plug and play LEDs for shaking incubators. They ensured that, compared to traditional fluorescent lights, using the LEDs resulted in comparable dry mass, chlorophyll concentration and optical density. These LED lights use only half the energy and produce much less heat – which means you can reduce the cooling needed. In addition, LEDs last longer, so the total replacement cost is lower.
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