NPR’s The Salt recently ran an article on a meatpacking facility in Chicago that is being converted into an indoor farm that will be powered by an anaerobic digester. The project is being called The Plant and will house a craft beer brewery, an aquaponics facility, a kombucha brewery, a commercial kitchen, a mushroom farm, other food related enterprises, and an outdoor farm. The website for The Plant notes:
Once completed, the completely enclosed, odorless anaerobic digester will consume 27 tons of food waste a day (nearly 11,000 tons annually), including all of the waste produced in the facility and by food producing businesses all over Chicago. The digester will capture all of the methane from that waste, and the methane will be burned in a combined heat and power system to produce electricity, plus all the process heat needed for an future onsite craft beer brewery. Excess heat will be used to regulate the building’s temperature.
What an innovative combination of waste disposal, farming, brewing, aquaponics, and entrepreneurism.
