Cool Aquaponics Set-Up
I just came across a really interesting article about an Aquaponics (among other things) greenhouse in New Jersey.
Juicy tomatoes, scrumptious fish, lettuce, herbs, exotic flowers and ornamental plants can all be found growing year round in Burlington County under a single roof.
The place is a dump. Literally.
Hard to believe? The Burlington County Resource Recovery Complex, more commonly known as the county landfill, ships between 150 to 200 pounds of tomatoes to a Princeton restaurant weekly.
Another 1,000 pounds of silver-striped tilapia leave the complex every six weeks headed for a fish market in the Chinatown section of Philadelphia.
An Israeli company is now growing lettuce and herbs, and a company from Taiwan is growing colorful orchids, all within the environmentally friendly confines of the resource recovery complex, which straddles the border between Florence and Mansfield.
The complex is also host to the Rutgers EcoComplex, a research and development center devoted to helping environmental research and entrepreneurship.
“We’re obviously involved in a lot of different things, but they all fall under the overall sustainability effort,” said Dave Specca, acting director of the EcoComplex.
The 46,000-square-foot green-house opened in 1996 on the Florence side of the landfill and the EcoComplex opened four years later on the Mansfield side.
Both are powered by methane, a byproduct gas produced by decomposition in the landfill, which is converted into electricity by microturbines outside the greenhouse. The electricity powers the sunlamps in the greenhouse and also heats the building so that the tomatoes and other plants can be grown year-round, Specca said.
Be sure to check out the full article: Bounty from county landfill
Also you might be interested in checking out the Rutgers EcoComplex Website as well.
Related EcoSherpa Articles:
Dr. John Todd: Eco-Visionary
Aquaponics - Hydroponics, Mother Nature Style
Technorati Tags: aquaponics, rutgers ecocomplex, sustainability, greenhouse, tilapia, tomatoes, aquaculture
Written by Bentley on March 28th, 2007 with
4 comments.
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Bentley
#1. March 30th, 2007, at 11:05 AM.
Unbelievable!
So they’re using the dump for the methane for power and probably the cheap land price. Sounds like a brilliant idea to me. I wonder if the same theory would work underground using geo-thermal energy to power the lights and heaters?