Jonathan Pereira
Plant Chicago
Previous to Plant Chicago, Jonathan Pereira worked as an informal science educator for over 15 years in a variety of urban settings. He developed numerous innovative programs such as Greencorps Youth Program in Chicago, and the Greentrack at Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School in New York City. In 2012, he was nominated for the Zayed Future Energy Prize (Global High Schools) along with his students in New York. He has had a career as a performer, writer and solo satirist for close for over a decade. He holds a BS in Geology and Spanish from Bates College and a Masters in Education in Science Education from the University of Illinois at Chicago.As the Executive Director of Plant Chicago, he’s working to bring the circular economy to life at the facility scale and working outwards toward the neighborhood and the city of Chicago. He sees a future where businesses work together to ensure that both the economy and environment are thriving.
The circular economy promises a transformation of economic activities away from the dominant linear economy's “take-make-waste” paradigm. However, the concept has been mainly been applied at the level of products and implemented by larger organizations. How can the circular economy be made more applicable to small and start-up enterprises? One ambitious project in Chicago aims to tackle this question.
The Plant, a renovated former meat-packing facility in Chicago’s South Side, is being repurposed into a collaborative community of food businesses committed to experimenting with circular economy principles through waste reduction and symbiotic reuse of materials. The facility began development in 2010 when the owner, John Edel of Bubbly Dynamics, made a conscious decision to repurpose the existing infrastructure through deconstruction, recycling of materials and renovation in line with its historic use as a food production facility. While Bubbly Dynamics is a for-profit enterprise, its sister organization, Plant Chicago, is a not-for-profit organization aimed at developing circular economies. Fundamental to The Plant’s design is the planned use of organic waste from on-site and off-site businesses to generate energy using anaerobic digestion, as well as by-product synergies among tenants. Agricultural and food enterprises are recruited in order to fit together like an industrial ecosystem, including: farms, brewery, kombucha tea producer and bakery. To achieve its social mission, Plant Chicago offers educational programming and public tours, as well as a farmers’ market and community events that feature products grown or made on site. Another significant social impact is that the staff has worked with lawmakers to change local ordinances that govern agriculture within city limits, such as to allow livestock production through aquaponics.
A Material Flow Analysis (MFA) was conducted in Summer 2016 in which we gathered and analyzed data on food, energy, water and waste flows through thirteen of the sixteen tenants who occupied the facility at the time of the study. The research also unveiled a daunting challenge for gathering and monitoring MFA data on an on-going basis, due to the size, seasonality, and changing composition of tenant businesses in the facility (Chance et al, 2016). Building on this MFA work, the current research is working towards developing a platform for co-creating and incubating circular economy principles among tenants in the building, and between the building and the broader community. The presentation will provide insights into this approach, and will explore how “hard” material flow data and “soft” broader social impact data from experimental facilities, such as The Plant, can be gathered and used to understand their contributions to the circular economy. While there are few directly comparable projects to The Plant in terms of size and complexity, we expect that other experimental circular economy projects face similar challenges in measuring and reporting their impacts, as such this framework could be usefully adapted by them.
References
Chance, E., W. Ashton, J. Pereira, J. Mulrow, J. Norberto, S. Derrible and S. Guilbert. 2016. “The Plant: An Experiment in Urban Food Sustainability.” In review at Journal of Environmental Progress and Sustainable Energy.
• Food, energy, water, and nutrient material flows and footprints , • Business and industry practices / case studies , • Circular economy
