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Jere: Here is a draft text (an approximately 5 minute read) that will be the lead for the A Project Proposal for project #1 in case #1 in the Ecotechnology page.

TimberFish Sustainability Proposal

Summary

This proposal describes an ecological, economic, and educational sustainability program using the TimberFish Technology. It is multidisciplinary, hands on, and integrally related to the real world. The program offers many benefits to students by demonstrating the meaning of sustainability in local and entrepreneurial applications. It also will integrate the knowledge they obtain in the academic areas of the natural sciences (biology chemistry, physics), applied technology (engineering, computer science, fabrication, construction), business (economics, entrepreneurial start ups, marketing), mathematics, sociology, philosophy, and art.

The program offers significant advantages to the university. By offering an environmental sustainability program that is unique, practical, and scalable to global application it will attract students who are very concerned about the looming issue of Climate Change, and who don’t know what they can do about it. The public relations that can be obtained from this will also be attractive to donors to the university, and for potential corporate sponsors who are looking for ways to improve their environmental image.

The program is centered on student participation in the building and operation of TimberFish systems that can recycle food wastes from university dining halls to produce seafood that could be used for future consumption in those dining halls.

The process comprises mixing non toxic food wastes, with wood chips that can be sustainably harvested from nearby woodlots or forests. This combination is used as a substrate to grow microbes, which are fed to invertebrates, which are then fed to fish and shrimp. The resulting seafood is clean and locally produced. The only other outputs are high quality effluents, a high energy residual wood chip, and potting soil. The process is non-polluting, ecologically sustainable, and economically competitive in todays' market.

The proposed program would begin with TimberFish delivering a mobile demonstration system to the university for an evaluation of potential full scale application at the university. The Demo is a trailer mounted unit with its own set of electronic controls and can be maintained and operated by students, faculty or staff. It also could be remotely operated and/or monitored by TimberFish personnel. It can be located anywhere that electrical power is available, or it can run with its own generator. Connections to water and sewers are preferred but are not absolutely necessary as the system can operate as a zero discharge or land application system for a short demonstration period. Appropriate permits for the demo will be obtained from NYS DEC for any form of the demonstration.

Once the university is satisfied with the Demo it could be scaled up to handle all of the university’s food wastes. TimberFish has operated a commercial pilot system at the Five & 20 Spirits & Brewing facility in Westfield, New York that would illustrate what this scale up might look like. This facility received all of the byproducts and production waste streams (no sanitary wastes) from the distillery and its companion brewery. The system grew fish and freshwater shrimp, recycled and treated all solid and dissolved wastes, produced a high energy wood chip residual which could be a renewable biofuel, and discharged a high quality effluent under strict permits issued by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

This program has an additional benefit in that it provides a template for the revival and continuation of the "Global Village" concept that Marshall McLuhan introduced in the 1960s. This could now include a series of local sustainable green circular economies which would integrate sociological, economic, and environmental factors into a sustainable future for humanity. It presents a potential path to resolve the issues of global Climate Change and environmental pollution.

To see a copy of the full draft proposal see; Proposal.pdf