Zero Waste

Anthroponics

  This post documents our work using urine as a primary nutrient in hydroponic systems. It is a  part of a series of blog posts exploring the historical and modern applications for human urine.  Part 1 is available here.  Part 2 is available here.     Three years ago, in the early spring, I bought two […]

Indigo Sig Vat

Waste not: Urine – Part 2: The Indigo Sig Vat This post is part of a series exploring the historical and modern applications for human urine.  Part 1 is available here. At the end of the previous post I left off with a short anecdote about how last year I set out to grow my […]

Waste Not Urine

In his posthumously published 1911 work Farmers of Forty Centuries, USDA agronomist F. H. King documents his travels studying the intensive agriculture of China, Korea and Japan.  Multiple references are made to the efforts of farmers and city-dwellers alike to collect and distribute human waste to nearby farms as a valuable source of ongoing fertility: […]

On-Farm Plastic Recycling

From last year’s Cooking with Food Waste workshop to the upcoming installment of the developing Waste Not series, Living Web Farms is making a point to not only reduce waste, but  help change the perspective on waste all together. There is no waste in nature.  As agriculturalists, there is great importance in studying farming practices […]

Home-Scale Biogas Production

My enlightenment on the subject of biogas began when I stumbled upon an article in a dog-eared copy of The Mother Earth News entitled “Chicken Manure Can Power Your Car.”  Buried among debatable bootstrap business stories and homespun garden-prep tutorials, the write-up recounted how a one-legged British maintenance man named Harold Bate converted a 1953 […]

Waste Not: Wood Ashes

In the fall of last year I led a short workshop covering some homestead applications of common wood stove ashes.  It was the first of what I hope will become one of many “Waste Not:” workshops hosted out of the Living Web Farms’ biochar facility.  Later this year I’ll discuss the myriad applications – of […]