Spotted: The move to get to net zero is often focused heavily on CO2, but methane, which has an 84-86 times higher global warming potential than CO2 in a 20-year period, is also rapidly accumulating in the Earth’s atmosphere. One reason for the increase in methane levels is that conventional agriculture practices have degraded soil health, causing a loss of naturally occurring, methane-digesting microbes.
A solution being developed by agritech startup Windfall Bio involves capturing methane and transforming it into living organic fertiliser. Windfall Bio uses a proprietary, nature-based technology to capture methane and use it to enrich methane-eating microbes that are found in soils. These organisms consume the methane, while also capturing nitrogen from the air, and transform these naturally into organic fertiliser.
Windfall Bio’s process takes place on-site, allowing agricultural enterprises such as farms and dairies to transform waste emissions into high-value organic fertiliser. This can either be used directly or sold to organic farms to generate new revenue streams.
The company recently announced it raised $9 million (around €8.3 million) in a seed round led by Mayfield and venture fund Untitled, with participation from additional investors. The capital raised will be used to begin pilot deployments on farms and to accelerate research and development (R&D) activities. Windfall Bio plans to enter broad commercial deployment soon.
There is growing concern about the role of methane in global warming. Luckily, this concern is beginning to be met with new innovations aimed at reducing methane levels. In the archive, Springwise has spotted the use of seaweed to tackle methane emissions from cattle and a plant that turns manure – a major source of methane – into biogas.
American startup Recompose has opened a funeral home in Seattle designed by architecture firm Olson Kundig, where human remains are composted and turned into a nutrient-rich soil that can nurture new plant life.
Set in a converted warehouse in the city’s SoDo district, the facility is one of the first to make use of a burgeoning practice known as natural organic reduction – or human composting, which was legalised in the state of Washington in 2019.
This sees the body of the deceased placed on a bed of plant materials inside a stainless steel vessel, purpose-built to accelerate the natural process of decomposition.
Recompose has opened a human composting facility in Seattle. Above photo by Austin Wilson
Over the course of 60 days, their remains are converted into one cubic yard of fertile soil – enough to fill the bed of a pickup truck. Loved ones can then take this compost home and use it to nourish their garden, plant trees in memory of the deceased or donate it to a local conservation area.
The aim is to offer a less polluting alternative to cremation or burial, which are hugely emissions and resource intensive, and instead create a meaningful funeral practice that allows people to give back to nature.
“Clients have shared with us that the idea of their person becoming soil is comforting,” Recompose founder Katrina Spade told Dezeen.
“Growing new life out of that soil is profound and the small ritual of planting, using soil created from a loved one’s body, is so tangible.”
Remains are left to decompose in cylindrical stainless steel vessels
Recompose’s 19,500-square-foot flagship facility in Seattle accommodates an array of 31 cylindrical composting vessels, stacked inside a hexagonal steel framework.
This vertical construction helps to conserve space in a bid to overcome the land-use issue associated with traditional burial and make human composting feasible even in dense urban areas.
“Recompose can be thought of as the urban equivalent to natural burial – returning us to the earth without requiring lots of land,” said Spade, a trained architect who developed the vessels as part of a residency at Olson Kundig‘s Seattle studio.
The building’s lobby brings in elements of nature including plants and wood
The building itself was designed in collaboration with the architecture studio to reimagine the experience of being in a funeral home, making the process more transparent and bringing in elements of nature instead of overt religious iconography.
In the spirit of regeneration, much of the warehouse’s original shell was preserved. Warm wooden flooring and a planted wall enliven the central lobby, while strips of green glass are inset into the walls to provide glimpses of the intimate ceremony space beyond.
Here, loved ones can participate in a “laying-in ceremony”, similar to a traditional funeral service.
Green glazing provides glimpses into the main ceremony room
“The Gathering Space has floor-to-ceiling coloured glass windows that let light in, similar to the way light filters between trees in a forest,” said Olson Kundig design principal Alan Maskin.
“In a way, Recompose is a funeral home turned inside-out. There’s a suggestion of transparency and openness about death – including the ability to see and understand the entire process – that’s very different from a traditional funeral home experience.”
At the end of the funeral service, the body is moved through a transitional vessel. Photo by Austin Wilson
During the ceremony, a simple wooden lectern allows the bereaved to share words about their loved ones while the body of the deceased is draped in a cotton shroud and presented on a dark green bed called a cradle.
Mimicking the ritual of throwing dirt on a casket, guests can place flowers and plant materials on their person, which will help their transformation into soil.
The funeral home also has dedicated rooms for those who want to perform more hands-on care for their deceased ahead of the ceremony by bathing the body or reciting prayers and songs.
At the end of the service, the cradle is moved through a so-called threshold vessel embedded into the wall and into the Greenhouse, where it will join the other vessels in the array.
“A tremendous amount of care was taken to consider the experience of the body,” Maskin said. “There’s even a bit of poetry inscribed along the inside of the transitional vessel used during ceremonies.”
“That poem isn’t for the living; it’s only visible inside the vessel.”
On the other side is the Greenhouse – home to an array of 31 vessels
Each vessel in the array contains a mix of plant materials developed by Recompose that includes wood chips, straw and a cloverlike plant called alfalfa, with ratios adapted based on the person’s body and weight.
Over the course of 30 days, the natural microbes found in the plants and the body will break down the remains, with any unpleasant odours filtered out and fresh air – and sometimes moisture – pumped into the vessel, which is intermittently rotated to speed up decomposition.
At the end of this process, any remaining bone fragments are ground down using a cremulator and any medical implants are removed for recycling.
The remaining soil is placed in a curing bin to dry out for another two to six weeks before it can be collected by friends or family.
The body is deposited inside one of these vessels along with different plant materials
Unlike cremation, this process does not require huge amounts of energy and fossil fuels, Recompose says, while the carbon contained in the human body is sequestered in the soil rather than released into the atmosphere.
The process also forgoes the vast amounts of embalming chemicals and emissions-intensive materials like steel and concrete that are needed for burials.
In total, the process to “transform your loved one’s body into soil” saves around one metric ton of CO2 emissions per person compared to burial or cremation, Recompose claims.
Friends and family can collect the soil and use it as they wish. Photo by Austin Wilson
Since 2019, a number of US states have followed in Washington’s footsteps and legalised natural organic reduction, with New York joining Colorado, Oregon, Vermont and California last month.
This comes as people are increasingly becoming aware of the hidden environmental impact of the deathcare industry and moving towards alternative funeral practices from liquid cremation to burial pods that grow into trees.
“Members of the baby boomer generation have started experiencing the deaths of their parents and I think many are asking: was that the best we can do,” Spade said.
The facility is housed inside a converted warehouse in SoDo. Photo by Austin Wilson
“But what’s interesting is that it’s not only older folks,” she added.
“Over 25 per cent of our Precompose [prepayment plan] members are under 49. I think this is because the climate crisis has played a role, too. People are wondering why our funeral practices haven’t been considered when it comes to our carbon footprint.”
To fight the threat of soil degradation to food supply, design graduate Ryan Waterhouse has invented a portable device that monitors the health of topsoil.
Terra Nova allows users to measure the levels of three critical nutrients within topsoil — nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous — as well as its moisture content.
Waterhouse developed the smart farming device as his final-year project in Bournemouth University’s product design course, after learning that soil degradation presents an imminent threat to arable land.
Terra Nova is a soil monitor that measures levels of moisture, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium
“The world grows 90 per cent of its food in topsoil – the uppermost layer of soil – making it one of the most critical components in our food system,” said Waterhouse.
“Current rates of nutritional soil degradation suggest that topsoil will run out in just 60 years, posing a significant threat to food production,” he continued. “Every minute, 30 football fields’ worth of topsoil is lost due to degradation.”
According to Waterhouse, Terra Nova could help to reverse this trend. The device enables farmers and gardeners to track degradation and assists them to improve the quality of the soil, in turn improving their crops.
A small screen on the device shows real-time readings
It has three retractable probes on the bottom that stick into the soil, with sensors that measure the levels of moisture and key nutrients in the soil.
The collected data is then displayed in two ways: on a small LCD screen on top of the device, which shows the soil readings at the present time, and on a web app, which presents weeks, months or even years of data in graphs and visualisation.
The app also has additional functionality, as users can tell which crops they are planting and get recommendations for their care, such as when to add a particular fertiliser.
Full data can be viewed on an accompanying web app
The soil monitor connects to the app using Long Range Networking (LoRa), a low-power wireless technology, so it can relay data even in remote locations with no Wi-Fi.
According to Waterhouse, growers can use Terra Nova in one of two main ways: the first option is to leave it in the ground long-term, in which case one device per fruit or vegetable variant being grown is usually recommended.
Alternatively, the user can pick up the device and replant it to test a variety of areas at one time. Waterhouse suggests this option would suit allotment holders growing multiple fruits and vegetables.
Waterhouse sees Terra Nova as being of extra use now amid skyrocketing fertiliser prices, which are particularly putting pressure on farmers in Africa.
The device is recommended for farmers, gardeners and allotment holders
“It is increasingly becoming more and more important to make educated and informed decisions on fertiliser usage because of recent cost increases,” Waterhouse told Dezeen. “I believe Terra Nova could significantly impact developing countries with education in increasing crop yields through correct farming practices.”
Waterhouse won the 2022 New Designer of the Year award, the top award at the UK’s New Designers showcase, with Terra Nova.
Other recent innovations designed for sustainable farming, include Pasturebird’s robotic chicken coop, which is meant to integrate animals with crops, and Studio Roosegaarde’s Grow light installation, designed to stimulate plant growth.
Spotted: Contaminated soil from polluted sites, such as old industrial facilities and petrol stations, causes problems across the globe. Until now, the main method for cleaning these sites has been the physical removal of contaminated soil to a landfill site, where it is used as a filling material. Fresh soil must then be brought in as a replacement. This is an extremely expensive, time-consuming, and emissions-intensive process – potentially requiring thousands of truckloads of soil to be transported over many kilometres.
Now, Finnish company Remsoil, has developed an entirely different approach to the problem. The company has developed a new method of soil ‘remediation’ that reduces the concentration of contaminants in the soil to safe levels.
The process takes advantage of the restorative capabilities of soil microbes. An additive made from animal and plant by-products is added to the contaminated soil. This waste contains high levels of nutrients that benefit the microbes, stimulating their activity. This activity then breaks down contaminants such as oils and PAH-compounds – a class of chemicals occurring naturally in coal, crude oil, and petrol.
This method for treating contaminated soil is cost-efficient and up to three times quicker than conventional remediation processes. Moreover, the additive can be applied to the soil on-site meaning that there is no need to transport soil back and forth. At the same time, the process also returns agricultural waste back to nature’s circulation.
Other microbe-based innovations recently spotted by Springwise include a startup that uses microbes to boost carbon sequestration, cement that is ‘grown’ using microbes, and a vegetable oil replacement made using microbes.
