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Community advocates on the South Side of Chicago are transforming nine acres of abandoned, once-polluted land into the Green Era Campus – a hub for urban agriculture and renewable energy.
Erika Allen is cofounder of Green Era Sustainability and CEO of the Urban Growers Collective – both of which are project partners.
Allen: “Our campus approach is to sort of learn, teach, demonstrate, and generate capital – to really be successful financially, without extracting from people or the environment.”
This year, the group cut the ribbon on its first major project – a large anaerobic biodigester.
The system takes food waste that would otherwise decompose in landfills and emit climate-warming gases to the atmosphere.
As it breaks that food down, the biodigester captures those gases instead – carbon dioxide for use in the concrete and beverage industries and methane that’s sold as renewable natural gas.
In the process, the system also produces fertilizer that helps community gardens grow healthy, local food.
Allen: “And then there’s a social dimension, of course, that our young people are growing up with this kind of innovative tech and this approach in their backyard, as opposed to it being somewhere else.”
So this investment in green technology is also an investment in the community’s future.
Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media
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