World-First Plan to Grow Food Above Landfill
- Editor OGN Daily
- Jul 22
- 1 min read
Plans have been revealed to grow fruit and vegetables using "cleaned" carbon dioxide in greenhouses above a landfill in what it is claimed will be a "world first".
The landfill in Wiltshire, south west England, is run by a company that already captures methane coming off the waste to power its operations and send energy to the national grid, as well as producing CO2. Having now started a community interest enterprise called Sustain Wiltshire, the company says it wants to use the site to grow food for the local area all year round.
The plans involve building greenhouses on the site to take advantage of the naturally generated CO2 and heat to produce food such as avocados, which are not usually grown commercially in the UK.
The project will involve flattening a large section of the landfill site to create pits - called "cells" - which will be lined with concrete and have waste put in them to produce gases. The gas will then be captured and cleaned so it can be used to produce electricity and pump the CO2 into the greenhouses which will sit above the cells.
The plan is also to make the greenhouses portable which will allow the pits underneath to be emptied and have fresh waste put in. Waste that cannot be recycled right away can have the organic matter rot and produce usable gas, and then that waste can also be processed again.
