The Living Lab project is a community-based model of urban sustainability and demonstrates an innovative, closed-loop food-waste-energy system providing new opportunities for public engagement, local participation, education and training. We grow a wide range of foods; harvest produce to create nutritious meals in our community kitchen; digest food waste to create renewable biogas and liquid fertilizer; use the fertilizer to enhance plant growth; and use biogas for making tea for our volunteers in the volunteer hub.

We aim to develop the project into an environmental educational research facility and a sustainable social enterprise.  With volunteers, we have created additional raised beds.

Imagine if we transformed our cities into urban eco oases that supported opportunities for green employment, where biogas made from food waste replaced fossil fuels and nutrients recycled to replace artificial fertiliser. Imagine if we used public spaces to grow food for local consumption.

Less than 10 minutes’ walk from Kings Cross, the Calthorpe Living Lab is creating the blueprint for just this!

Our cutting-edge closed-loop experiment takes organic waste from the community kitchen and our local resident food waste collection scheme to feed our anaerobic digester, which turns the waste into biogas for cooking and heating, and liquid fertiliser to grow more food for our community kitchen. Our off-grid food growing area has polytunnels, raised beds, a digester and wormeries. Together with researchers, engineers, students and volunteers, we carry out work, which we hope will one day be part of everyday sustainable living. If we spread the idea of waste as a precious resource and share what we learn, the model could be replicated anywhere, including places where food, fertiliser, and fuel are scarce.