Tuesday, August 9, 2011

The Plant Chicago Open House

Open house noon to 4 at The Plant this Saturday, Aug 13, with tours on the half hour. Plus, free food and beer.

Plant Chicago is a nonprofit dedicated to promote sustainable food production, entrepreneurship, and building reuse through education, research and development. To this end, Plant Chicago is repurposing a 93,500 sq. ft. retired meatpacking facility, The Plant, into a net-zero energy vertical farm. A complex and highly interrelated system, one-third of The Plant will hold aquaponic growing systems and the other two-thirds will incubate sustainable food businesses by offering low rent, low energy costs, and a licensed shared kitchen. The Plant will create 125 jobs in Chicago’s economically distressed Back of the Yards neighborhood – but, remarkably, these jobs will require no fossil fuel use. Instead, The Plant will divert over 6,500 tons of food waste from landfills each year to meet all of its heat and power needs.

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