This Lab Uses Technology to Feed the Planet

Pebbles, insects, and avocado peels could be the answer to eliminating food waste. At least, that’s what one London lab hopes.

Green Lab, an agritech incubator and innovation lab, works with startup companies to integrate waste removal with more sustainable agriculture. In July 2019, the group opened a new lab that combines biological research with art and design.

One long-term project at the Green Lab looks to nature to try to create cheap and healthy protein sources for livestock and pets. In this project, waste from restaurants is fed to insects. Those insects are then ground into a protein powder that is packaged into a bar for animals to eat.

“Conceptually, there is no waste in nature, it’s just nutrients,” Andrew Gregson, the founder of Green Lab, tells Inverse. “And yet we’ve managed to probably destroy a third of the food we produce on this planet.”

Some of the other experiments conducted at Green Lab include using banana skins as textile dyes and growing plants in pebbles instead of soil. But these projects have a long way to go before they can be replicable or widely available.

Watch the video above to see how Green Lab is experimenting with solutions to our waste problem.