Urban Crop Solutions has won the SDG Award, from the EU Tech Chamber, for their contributions to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 11, to make cities and communities more sustainable. They were endorsed for their holistic approach in their mission to bring food production closer to the point of consumption, through indoor vertical farming; as well as their research into innovative waste reduction and recycling methods to make agriculture more circular.
The award was announced at the SDG Awards 2021 Summit, organized by the EU Tech Chamber, and sponsored by the European Senate of Economy and Technology. Of the 170 finalists, 17 companies received an award per SDG. Urban Crop Solutions was nominated for and took part in the competition for SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.
Urban Crop Solutions, however, have positioned themselves as looking at an even bigger picture. Their mission and vision do not stop at bringing food production closer to the point of consumption, and minimizing the input of resources required (i.e., water and land), but also in reducing what goes out as waste. They are currently working as part of a research consortium to integrate within an indoor farm, an anaerobic digester that converts food waste into power, CO2, nutrients, heat, and biogas – satisfying all the inputs required by an indoor farm.
“We wanted to approach this holistically. We all know that cities and urban areas are black boxes where a lot of inputs go in, but often, the only thing that comes back out is waste” said Founder & CTO, Maarten Vandecruys. “What we are doing here, is actually producing food from food waste – essentially leading to an entirely circular system and this is crucial if we want to make urban farming a success”, he explained.
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