Green Economy

Posted on July 30, 2012 by letsgochicago

Hello All!

With our first signs up in front of our yardshares, we decided to kick off a week in “Green Economy!” LET’S REVIEW! As a program, we worked on developing potential business models. We came up with many ideas as well as questions. We discussed about what a “green economy” meant and what we could do to make a model that we could apply to our current system. This was important to us because we are trying to develop a self-sustainable model. For ideas on how to do this, we went to a place called the Green Exchange in Logan Square. The Green Exchange is a hub for sustainable and green businesses. While we did meet a variety of businesses, the one we spent the most time with was WeFarm America. We were able to meet some inspiring individuals that were making it easy for people to garden. They are doing exciting things with urban gardening. They developed a working business model for financial sustainability, and it was great to see how they were doing things. On Friday, we were able to close the week by getting to know some of the businesses in the neighborhood. We canvassed the neighborhood to talk with business owners and employees about their own business practice as well as what we were doing. We happened to run into the president of the Rogers Park Chamber of Commerce, Bill. Bill was supportive of our desire to know more about the neighborhood businesses and gave us his contact information. It was awesome getting to know the neighborhood businesses and seeing what they were doing.

ALSO, Molly taught us how to make paper for the week’s skill share! Many of us were very excited.

Greg

Water week!

Posted on July 22, 2012 by letsgochicago

Molly and children in the garden during water week

The week of July 9, which focused on water issues, was so busy we didn’t have time for a mid-week blog post, but we have plenty of water-themed stories to tell. We kicked off the week by watching a documentary called Flow: For Love of Water on Monday. It’s about issues of clean water scarcity, and how the privatization of clean water sources by big business is hurting our communities and forcing people to suffer. It was shocking to see such a phenomenon taking place, but it energized our discussion of global water issues, and inspired us with stories of how communities have successfully fought for their right to clean water. Continue reading →

UrbanPonics

Posted on July 18, 2011 by letsgochicago

When we’re not busy building compost bins, raising chicken coop frames, and removing vicious 6 foot weeds, we here at LETS GO Chicago like to kick back… by waking up at 6:45 am and taking an hour long train ride to Chinatown.

While we didn’t get any Chinese take-out, we got something that was even better than hand-made ramen: a FREE tour of one of Chicago’s urban farming centers, UrbanPonics, LLC.

Lee talking with Erin and Bryne

UrbanPonics is the brainchild of Bral Spight and Lee Reid, two men from extraordinarily different backgrounds thrown together during a leadership conference. The result of a bit of collaboration was a hydroponics concept lab in the Riverfront Work Lofts, a thriving part of Chicago’s Creative Industry district right next to Chinatown. Now, Urbanponics employs several economically disadvantaged men and women and has successfully produced a high yield of lettuce, tomatoes, and herbs.

Greens and herbs a'growing

UrbanPonics uses a technique called hydroponics to grow plants without soil. Instead, minerals are dissolved into purified water and streamed through the plant’s roots, providing everything a plant needs to grow without any soil borne diseases or pests; lights of varying wattage provide year-round ‘sunlight’ for the plants, while inorganic “growing mediums” like rock wool offer structure for the stems. These four components- minerals, water, light, and structure- are all the plants need to grow, and thrive, indoors.

The LET'S GO team exploring the facilities.

But UrbanPonics is more than just a lab for indoor farming; it’s a lab for science skills and business knowledge, and for engineering techniques and artistic finesse. In short, it is as much a center for innovation as it is a center of contradictions; the work conducted at UrbanPonics is nothing short of a miracle, but it is so intuitive that we had to wonder: why isn’t every city doing this?

Look at that basil!

For as much or as little as you care about agribusiness or monocrops, hydroponics is still pretty cool. Imagine getting fresh lettuce NOT from the other side of the country, or the world, but from a farm in your city. A farm you can visit easily- via public transportation perhaps?- that also has a wide variety of greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, and other crops.

Fortunately, our days of dreaming of a full scale urban farm may be at an end. Mr. Spight and Mr. Reid plan to expand their concept lab into a 4 acre facility in Chicago’s South Side, complete with 50 bee hives, rain water collection, and a co-generative energy system.

UrbanPonics made for an exciting, inspiring, super-fun, and informative field trip!! To visit yourself, go to 500 W. Cermak Road, Chicago, Il, a few blocks from the Red Line.

-Bryne