I love that at the heart of it all is the alcohol industry. :)
Basically:
Waste from a brewery, barley mash, hops, dead yeast, are used as a growth medium (mixed with sawdust or straw) with which to cultivate cultures of edible fungi, which convert the barley/straw material into mycelium, which fruit into edible mushrooms.
The edible mushrooms are harvested, leaving behind root structure and nutritional content which is then fed to pigs.
The pig manure is harvested and used for compost, creating methane which is captured in the process, used for cooking, heating, lighting.
The waste is put through what they call a BioDigester, which essentially isolates the waste from oxygen, and processes it anaerobically (without oxygen), to turn into usefull fertilizer. The system is 60% efficient in sequestering CO2, but the remaining 40% is processed in shallow pools aerobically(in the presence of oxygen) by algae, which are harvested to feed a large fish population which they in turn harvest.
The rich biodiversity of the ponds and fish quarters are partially covered (at the fringes, one assumes) with a substrate which enables hydroponic growing of crops, assisted by waste processed from the pigs.
Basically, insert labor, water, sunshine, and industrial waste, and you have the entire economy of a small village.
Posts
