Environment
A Living Lab
Our Living Lab is a community-based model of urban sustainability; an innovative, closed-loop food-waste-energy system that aspires to become a research resource, offering a wide platform for public engagement and providing opportunities for local participation, education and training. Now this exciting organic circular economy project needs your help!
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 café to feed our anaerobic digester, which turns the waste into biogas for cooking and heating, and liquid fertiliser to grow more food for the café.
Our off-grid food growing area has polytunnels, raised beds and hydroponic systems, a digester and wormeries. The digester is housed in a greenhouse with solar panels on the roof. 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.
We grow a wide range of foods; harvest produce to create nutritious meals in our community café; digest food waste to create renewable biogas and liquid fertilizer; use the fertilizer to enhance plant growth; and use biogas for cooking and heating indoor growing space in winter. We aim to develop the project into an environmental educational facility and social enterprise. With volunteers, we have created additional raised beds and low-cost vertical hydroponic systems.
We aim to give communities a space they can call their own, whether to relax and enjoy the garden or grow some of their own vegetables to take home. A strong community is the heart of any town or city and our open garden serves to provide a place for people to enjoy with their neighbours. We have two types of food growing provision, group sessions working in the communal growing space or individual allotments.
“Calthorpe offers great nutritious food using ingredients grown in their own garden”
- M. Henson, local resident.
We provide gardening, crafts and healthy eating sessions, primarily for retired people but anyone is welcome. Gardening provides not only exercise but enjoyment and fresh food. The sessions started as referrals from GP’s for exercise and socialising. Originally one day a week, we now offer daily sessions including a creative art session thanks to funding received from the Mercers’ Company. Participants benefit from physical exercise and improved diet. We talk about the principles and benefits of healthy eating and we also share cooking tips.
We have a number of allotment spaces for women in the community.
Our garden gives opportunities for hands-on contact with nature in the heart of King’s Cross. We are not only a green space to relax in, but have vegetable plots, a woodland play area, and a wild garden planted with native species which includes a pond and beehive. All of these are used for a wide range of activities with different groups.
