Working with Plant Chicago, a group of students from Dr. Weslynne Ashton’s ‘Industrial Ecology and Systems Thinking’ class at IIT’s Stuart School of Business conducted Waste Audits and Material & Energy Flow Analyses on five businesses based inside The Plant. Plant Chicago was especially interested in this project because of the possibility to learn 1) how “circular” businesses inside The Plant already are, and 2) what opportunities might exist for business owners in the buil

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

Article by Eva Chancé, French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) (This research was led by Eva in partnership with Plant Chicago and Research Steering Committee members from Illinois Institute of Technology and University of Illinois Chicago) In this paper entitled “The Plant – an experiment in urban food sustainability” and published recently in the journal Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy, we present the concept of urban food production and oppor

Plant Chicago’s Research Steering Committee (RSC) met this month to discuss Plant Chicago’s research agenda. Ideas for the year ahead include testing of mushroom-growing substrates, improving material flow measurements at The Plant, testing circular economy business models, and creating a Plant “toolkit” for similar projects around the world. Plant Chicago has been working with academic communities since the earliest days of operation and experimentation at The Plant. The ear