Go Green Wilmette Members Tour “The Plant”

 The Plant is an innovative, incubator project that supports the sustainable production of food in an urban environment. A group of Go Green Wilmette members were intrigued when they learned about The Plant, and arranged to investigate what urban farming looked like in an old meat packing site in the Back of the Yards area of Chicago.

What the Go Green Wilmette group found was a budding community of entrepreneurs working together to grow and process food inside a solid old building that for decades had processed and packed pork products. Although the space is far from finished, the group did see the aquaponic production of fresh herbs and vegetables, mushrooms growing on sacks of straw and spent grains, and other craft food businesses like the production of kobucha.  Future plans include a common, certified food production kitchen that will be completed in the coming year so that food producers and educators will be able to share and rent on an as needed basis. Shared commercial kitchen spaces are a huge benefit to the community and local economy, as they lower the overhead costs of leasing or purchasing kitchen space and equipment.

In the courtyard, a giant anaerobic digester was near completion. This unit will be fed from several sources that include the spent grains from the microbrewery in the basement area and the compostable parts of the plants from the aquaponic units, and compostable waste collected from local restaurants. The digester when fully operational will produce the biogas needed to generate electricity to heat, light and cool the building. Other byproducts will be available to use for soil enrichments for The Plant vegetable gardens and for sale to the public.

According to John Edel, the owner and executive director, "The Plant connects the outputs of one business to the inputs of another. The Plant community is harnessing the value from materials that most people would throw away."

To learn more about the project, visit http://www.plantchicago.com/ .

To learn more about Go Green Wilmette go to: www.gogreenwilmette.org