Kheyti–Greenhouse In A Box! Biocellection, Bee Downtown!

 KHEYTI—GREENHOUSE IN A BOX!

On the one hand, Kheyti—greenhouse in a box—is just a smarter, more equitable way of building greenhouses. Which makes it climate adaptive agriculture. On the other hand, because it’s a smarter, more equitable way of building greenhouses, it’s green technology, helping farmers become more resilient to climate change. Either way, it’s a great idea! 

Kheyti designs, adapts and implements low-cost farming solutions which help small farmers increase yield and predictability of produce. The company’s greenhouse-in-a-box is a low cost, modular, and technologically-equipped greenhouse.In addition to that, Kheyti provides installation and training services, delivering a product that decreases the unpredictability of farming and increase a farmer’s earning potential.

Here’s how it works: The company is connected to universities and partners that have developed new materials with lower costs structures; it uses sensors that allow farmers to collect data on conditions and efficiency in the greenhouse, as well as aid with automation; and Kheyti has developed a hydroponics system that makes a one-size-fits-all solution and allow farmers to grow food regardless of soil type or condition. 

Kheyti claims to have increased crop yields by 7x with the 1000+ farmers who have their greenhouse-in-a-box.And why does Kheyti—greenhouse in a box–matter to us who don’t live in India? Farmers all over the world are experiencing the effects of climate change, such as unpredictable spells of drought, rain, wind or new species of insects that diminish their yields every season. Given the escalating food crises across the world, this is not a farmer’s problem alone. This problem equally affects all of us and is an issue we can potentially be doing something about. 

The company’s goal is to reach 50,000 farmers by 2027.

DEEPER DIVE: Kheyti, YouTube, Q&A with Kheyti co-founder, Forbes

BIOCELLECTION 

Today, less than 10% of packaging plastics are recycled. The rest goes to a landfill or becomes pollution. Two Canadian women, Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao, are poised to radically change that statistic. The duo invented a proprietary chemical recycling technology that breaks down previously unrecyclable plastic into valuable base chemicals.

They say they were influenced by the knowledge that a garbage patch twice the size of Texas floating halfway between California and Hawaii is polluting the oceans and harming marine life, too. The BioCellection technology is a chemical recycling process. A chemical reaction breaks the chemical bonds between the molecules to reduce them into simple molecules.

The resulting organic acids (succinic acid, glutaric acid and adipic acid, among others) are intermediate chemicals that are used in many high-performance materials for cars, electronics and clothing. Adipic acid, for example, is used in the manufacture of nylon. 

In an interview with the Warton’s Mack Institute for Innovation Management, Miranda Wang said, “You can’t destroy matter, right? You can’t just make plastics go away; you have to turn them into something. The question for a while for us was, what do we turn it into that would give it enough value for us to actually take this process, develop it, and scale it up?”

As crass as that sounds, that’s why BioCellection matters to us. Without their technology—which created a market for intermediate chemicals from recycled plastic—the world’s capitalist/market-based culture would find no financial incentive to recycle plastic on a massive scale.

BioCellection turns each ton of plastic trash into more than $2,500 worth of chemicals and prevents 20 tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted. Given that a ton of plastic trash costs only what it costs to pick it up and deliver it to a BioCellection facilty, the ROI is enormous.

DEEPER DIVE: BioCellection, Forbes, ChemRecycling, YouTube, Garbage Patch

BEE DOWNTOWN

Bee Downtown installs and maintains beehives on corporate campuses across the the American southeast region, while simultaneously providing year-round employee engagement and leadership development programming to many of America’s leading corporations. Bee Downtown was founded in Durham, NC in 2015 by 25-year old, fourth-generation apiarist Leigh-Kathryn Bonner. Her journey began while still in college. She’d asked her landlord if she could keep honeybee hives at her apartment. When the answer was “no” she turned to American Tobacco Campus, which coincidentally was the location of the world headquarters of Burt’s Bees. And oh by the way, she was interning at Burt’s Bees.  

ATC gave her permission to place three hives on the roof. They attracted local media, and other companies started asking about bringing bees to their campuses as well. Boom. In addition to setting up hives, Bonner conducts corporate seminars where she shares how the micro actions of bees point toward ways humans can interact with far sweeter outcomes in both a personal and business context, according to her website.

Bee Downtown offers a variety of programs including the Corporate Hive Program, Virtual Team Experiences and the BDT Leadership Institute. The Corporate Hive Program creates experiences that allow employees to uniquely engage with bees, agriculture, each other, and their workplace.

At the BDT Leadership Institute, participants dive into a hands-on, immersive experience where they are guided through the hives and see, first hand, the behaviors of the bees as individuals and as part of the colony. And it combines proven leadership methodologies and Biomimicry, an approach to learning that looks to nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies to address human challenges.

And that’s why Bee Downtown matters to us. BDT teaches corporations how to incorporate nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies into corporate governance,

DEEPER DIVE: BDT, Inc.Magazine, BitterSoutherner\