Choices: Caribbean Agriculture: Our way

Agriculture and food production should not be occupations of last resort. Showcasing many fascinating insights, this title features individuals, farm families and community groups in the Caribbean who have made a deliberate choice to enter, stay and focus on achieving success in this vibrant and rewarding sector. With stories that inform, educate and inspire, Choices provides accounts of innovations in aquaculture, hydroponics, permaculture, shade-house technology and organic farming

Building-integrated rooftop greenhouses: an energy and environmental assessment in the mediterranean context

A sustainable and secure food supply within a low-carbon and resilient infrastructure is encapsulated in several of The United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals. The integration of urban agriculture in buildings can offer improved efficiencies; in recognition of this, the first south European example of a fully integrated rooftop greenhouse (iRTG) was designed and incorporated into the ICTA-ICP building by the Autonomous University of Barcelona. This design seeks to interchange heat, CO2 and rainwater between the building and its rooftop greenhouse. Average air temperatures for 2015 in the iRTG were 16.5 °C (winter) and 25.79 °C (summer), making the iRTG an ideal growing environment. Using detailed thermophysical fabric properties, 2015 site-specific weather data, exact control strategies and dynamic soil temperatures, the iRTG was modelled in EnergyPlus to assess the performance of an equivalent ‘freestanding’ greenhouse. The validated result shows that the thermal interchange between the iRTG and the ICTA-ICP building has considerable moderating effects on the iRTG’s indoor climate; since average hourly temperatures in an equivalent freestanding greenhouse would have been 4.1 °C colder in winter and 4.4 °C warmer in summer under the 2015 climatic conditions. The simulation results demonstrate that the iRTG case study recycled 43.78 MWh of thermal energy (or 341.93 kWh/m2/yr) from the main building in 2015. Assuming 100% energy conversion efficiency, compared to freestanding greenhouses heated with oil, gas or biomass systems, the iRTG delivered an equivalent carbon savings of 113.8, 82.4 or 5.5 kg CO2(eq)/m2/yr, respectively, and economic savings of 19.63, 15.88 or 17.33 €/m2/yr, respectively. Under similar climatic conditions, this symbiosis between buildings and urban agriculture makes an iRTG an efficient resource-management model and supports the promotion of a new typology or concept of buildings with a nexus or symbiosis between energy efficiency and food production.Postprint (published version

A concept of water usage efficiency to support water reduction in manufacturing industry

Increasing pressures on freshwater supplies, continuity of supply uncertainties, and costs linked to legislative compliance, such as for wastewater treatment, are driving water use reduction up the agenda of manufacturing businesses. A survey is presented of current analysis methods and tools generally available to industry to analyze environmental impact of, and to manage, water use. These include life cycle analysis, water footprinting, strategic planning, water auditing, and process integration. It is identified that the methods surveyed do not provide insight into the operational requirements from individual process steps for water, instead taking such requirements as a given. We argue that such understanding is required for a proactive approach to long-term water usage reduction, in which sustainability is taken into account at the design stage for both process and product. As a first step to achieving this, we propose a concept of water usage efficiency which can be used to evaluate current and proposed processes and products. Three measures of efficiency are defined, supported by a framework of a detailed categorization and representation of water flows within a production system. The calculation of the efficiency measures is illustrated using the example of a tomato sauce production line. Finally, the elements required to create a useable tool based on the efficiency measures are discussed

Sustainability and the City: New Kensington CDC's Sustainable 19125 Initiative

New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC), an organization long dedicated to revitalizing the East Kensington, Fishtown, and Port Richmond neighborhoods of Philadelphia, launched an urban sustainability initiative in 2009 called "Sustainable 19125." The initiative's goal is to make the 19125 ZIP code the most sustainable ZIP code in the city