A couple of things showed up in my inbox this week, completely unrelated, but it made me think about how to get the two together. One of them was from "sustainable cities" a part of the Danish Architecture Centre, and it was an article about how the city of Havana, with over 2.3 million inhabitants grows more than 50% of its fresh produce within its city limits. This is significant as more than half of the worlds population lives in urban areas at the moment, with almost 180,000 people moving to the city each day.
The other mail that I found was from an organization working in Haiti called SOIL that is working to transform waste into resources. They collect human waste with the use of EcoSan toilets (for more info, see my previous post here) and turn it into organic compost. In a country wrought with soil depletion and topsoil erosion, this is especially important. Currently they have over 400,000 gallons of compost at their waste curing plants and there is plenty more of where that came from.
This got me thinking about putting the two together. Whereas in Havana, most gardens are grown in abandoned lots or on top of crumbled houses, what can you do where there is no available land? Could you use the compost to supply the soil for roof gardens? And could you go one step further to use the newly created soil to be compressed into earthen blocks to build houses? Turning compost into compressed earthen blocks, now that puts a whole new meaning to the phrase "shittin' bricks!"
The soil needed for compressed blocks needs a certain consistency for strength commonly made with a mixture of dirt, clay, and aggregate. But imagine a structure where all the exterior surfaces could be used to grow the food the inhabitants eat and then eventually excrete out again to produce more soil for their neighbors house.
The other mail that I found was from an organization working in Haiti called SOIL that is working to transform waste into resources. They collect human waste with the use of EcoSan toilets (for more info, see my previous post here) and turn it into organic compost. In a country wrought with soil depletion and topsoil erosion, this is especially important. Currently they have over 400,000 gallons of compost at their waste curing plants and there is plenty more of where that came from.
This got me thinking about putting the two together. Whereas in Havana, most gardens are grown in abandoned lots or on top of crumbled houses, what can you do where there is no available land? Could you use the compost to supply the soil for roof gardens? And could you go one step further to use the newly created soil to be compressed into earthen blocks to build houses? Turning compost into compressed earthen blocks, now that puts a whole new meaning to the phrase "shittin' bricks!"
The soil needed for compressed blocks needs a certain consistency for strength commonly made with a mixture of dirt, clay, and aggregate. But imagine a structure where all the exterior surfaces could be used to grow the food the inhabitants eat and then eventually excrete out again to produce more soil for their neighbors house.
As a follow up to this post, I contacted a qualified professional who stressed that organic material in compressed block needs to be avoided as much as possible because it reduces the strength of the block.
ReplyDeleteI would think though, that it could be used on top of a stable roof structure for a roof top garden, at least.