Sustainable pot is a vegetable garden and an aquarium at the same time
Using an ancient technique, vase transforms the physiological needs of fish into fertilizer for plants, while cleaning the water
Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora had the idea, during their last semester at the University of Berkeley, in 2009, to turn waste into fresh food. With that, they founded the startup Back To the Roots and created, among other products, Aquafarm. The product is a vase and an aquarium at the same time: at the top is the vase and at the bottom, the aquarium.
To prepare this product, the breeders used the aquaponics technique, which is basically a symbiosis between aquaculture (fish farming) and hydroponics (plant cultivation without the use of soil), and dates from approximately 1.2 a thousand years ago. In this method, fish excrement works as a source of nutrition for the plants, and these have the role of naturally filtering the water in which the fish live. In this environment, there are also microbes and red worms, which do the work of converting ammonia from fish waste, first into nitrites and then into nitrates. Solid excrement is transformed into fertilizer, which serves as nutrition for the plants.
This is how it works at Aquafarm: the fish residues present in the water are pumped up and transformed into organic fertilizer for the plants grown on rocks. Plants absorb nutrients and, at the same time, clean the water that is returned to the aquarium. With this, the only thing the user has to do is feed the fish, because the rest is up to them and the plants. This way you also get rid of pesticides and repellents.
According to the creators, herbs are the ideal plants to be cultivated in the pot, but nothing prevents vegetable leaves from being cultivated as well. As for fish, Velez and Arora claim that most species can be raised in this aquarium.
The project sought crowdfunding on the Kickstarter website and, after reaching its goal, can be purchased on the company's website for US$59.99 (about R$137). Learn more about Back to the Roots and this product in the video below:
