This past week, Plant Chicago welcomed sixteen local small businesses to their first Circular Economy (CE) Leaders Network meeting. First of its kind, the program assists entrepreneurs in Chicago’s South Side who seek to implement sustainable practices into their existing business model. Businesses start off by receiving The Circular Economy Toolkit for Small Business and setting a primary goal that they would like to achieve by the end of this year. The toolkit defines Circu

If you’ve been following our social media, you’ve seen periodic updates of Eva’s SCOBY textile project. Below is her summary, the final product, and thoughts on where to go next with flexible materials made from these single-celled organisms. As discussed in my initial blog post, I focused on two experimental paths: the brewing of kombucha specifically for harvesting SCOBY, and the post-harvest processing on existing leftover SCOBY. I will continue to refer to the SCOBY (Symb

Introducing Plant Chicago’s newest intern, Eva Durance, who is experimenting with SCOBYs as a means of textile production. For this project we’re partnering with fellow The Plant tenant Matt Lancor of Kombuchade, who is graciously lending us equipment, starter cultures, and technical support. I am a student at Columbia College Chicago majoring in Fashion Studies with a concentration in Fashion Merchandising and minoring in Environmental Studies. While searching through possib

By Dana Greene, Materials Management Intern As an intern with Plant Chicago, I have been able to work on a variety of unique projects project related to materials management. For some, “materials management” is just a polite way to talk about trash. For others, it’s a way to change the way we think about “trash” not as a waste, but as an opportunity. Project #1: Sorting through some trash This past spring, I was fortunate enough to be able to work alongside Professor Weslynne

Blog Post by Andre Nogueira (PhD Candidate, Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design). This post is about BarnRaise 2017, a conference focused on food waste solutions, held at the IIT Institute of Design.  All diagrams by Andre Nogueira and Raina Russ. It’s no secret that the food industry is in great need of reform in Chicago, especially when it comes to waste. From agricultural fields to kitchens, from markets to tables, food waste is being generated, and that

Post by Shauhrat Chopra (Assistant Professor, City University of Hong Kong, formerly a Post-Doctoral Researcher at University of Illinois Chicago) and Weslynne Ashton (Associate Professor, Illinois Institute of Technology Stuart School of Business). Here, Shauhrat and Weslynne present a Life-Cycle Assessments of bread baking, considering wood versus Plant Chicago biobricks as fuel. In a facility-scale industrial symbiosis system like The Plant, the ideal is for one business t