The plastic problem
At the start of the year, I decided not to buy any fresh groceries (fruit, veg and meat) that are packaged in plastic. I had noticed amount of landfill waste just two of us were producing in our apartment each week, and realised that most of it was plastic cartons and wrapping for ‘fresh’ meat and vegetables. To me, it seems like absolute madness to wrap goods that perish in a matter of days in layer upon layer of plastic that could take 500 years+ to degrade.
It’s really not so simple to eat a plastic-free diet - it takes a fair amount of forward-planning to stock up on supplies from the few markets and delis that serve fish and meat over the counter and sell loose fruit and vegetables.
Shelves stocked with tasty plastic covered fruit and veggies!
The freshness problem
The second problem is that the salad leaves offered in supermarkets in Helsinki (and I suspect in many other European cities) are quite honestly, $#ⅈ₮. Most often you will find that many of the leaves are wilted and some are already rotting, and then they are also packaged in not one, but 2 layers of plastic!
There must be a better way… So here’s my idea for a final project - an Aeroponic Growing System for producing fresh and healthy salads, leafy greens and herbs all year round, without a ton of plastic wrapped around them!
A possible solution
Aeroponics is a variant of hydroponics (growing plants in a water and nutrient solution and without soil), where moisture and nutrients are delivered to the plants in a mist.
The mist provides plant roots with a high concentration of oxygen (necessary for healthy plant growth) and can reduce water consumption by up to 95% over traditional field growing and 40% compared to hydroponics (citation needed). Growing without soil on an accelerated growing cycle also breaks the normal life cycle of common pests, so there is no need for pesticides.
There are many examples of home-brew and commercial hydro- and aeroponic system out there. The home-brew systems are usually, let’s say, not so pretty and the commercial systems expensive.
Me being me - I would like to make my own, from scratch, the way I want it to be. This also gives me the benefit of gaining a deeper understanding of these systems, and therefore knowing what to do if something isn’t working as expected…
A wishlist of features for the system:
- Grow fresh and healthy salads, leafy greens and herbs all year round
- Designed for home (should look good)
- Minimize water and nutrient consumption
- Programmable misting cycle (set for particular plants)
- Programmable grow lights (for accelerated or normal grow cycles)
- Grow lights compensate for spacial light intensity
- Indicate when crops are ready to harvest
- App to control the system and deliver notifications (time to harvest, maintainence needed)
TODOs
☑ Describe and make a sketch of a viable final project
Links
Fab Academy 2016 - Principles and Practices