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How green does your garden grow?
April 11, 2002Scientists at the University of Plymouth have been developing methods to `close the loop` on waste and pollution, by finding waste products that can be used to improve soil / plant-growth conditions. At the Society for Experimental Biology conference in Swansea Dr Stuart Lane presented ways in which garden and industrial waste could be recycled to benefit the environment.
In collaboration with Ecological Sciences Limited, Dr Lane`s group investigated a horticultural growth substitute for peat, derived from garden waste products. Because the mining of peat bogs is both unsustainable and ecologically destructive, given that peat bogs take hundreds of years to form and provide a specialised habitat, horticulturalists are seeking to replace traditional methods based on peat with more environmentally friendly alternatives. Many of these are, however, considered to be less productive or too variable for commerical use.
The EcoSci research project headed by Stephen Bullock experimented with green waste derived compost (GWC) produced from of garden waste (such as hedge trimmings and lawn clippings) collected from civic refuse sites. The waste was carefully composted and mixed with coir - coconut husks, another industrial waste product - and composted bark. The GWC was tested against a well-known peat-based commercial product for ten plant species and was found to match or out-perform the peat product in many of the parameters tested. GWC is organically accredited and the company is now looking to develop an organic multi-purpose compost.
Dr Lane`s group also investigated a waste product of horticulture. Hydroponics - growing plants without soil - frequently uses glass fibre based materials that cannot be easily recycled. In the search for alternatives, zeolite has been considered - a cystalline solid that acts like a molecular sieve and is used in industrial catalysts and in products such as washing powders. Zeolite effectively retains and exchanges ions, so can be used to `channel` nutrients to plant roots and retain toxic minerals, providing a good growth medium. Work by the group has indicated that it could be re-used for a number of growth cycles, and eventually discarded by mixing it into soil at concentrations where it would not interfere with the flow of beneficial minerals to plants or release high levels of harmful metals.
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