During an online tutorials for university last week, I discussed with my one of my tutors the idea of creating an environment within our urban study proposals that would be a thriving and balanced eco-system for both animals and humans. We have been encouraged to not use the word 'green' as it can be too broad and used as a general context to indicated that something is 'somewhat eco-friendly', but I would like to create a site which has areas of dense vegetation, and plants local to the area which will both aid with purifying the air naturally as well as providing habitats for the wildlife - I imagine that this approach (amongst others) will be the way forward to slowing down, if not stopping the climate crisis.
Rightly so, I was encouraged to think about the process to creating this ideal environment rather than assuming the site will be fit for wildlife and future development. Former mills and gas works on the site have polluted the ground, the woodland to the east is littered with rubbish and potentially used as a fly tipping point indicating the lack of efficient and usable recycling points local to the area, garbage can also ben observed in the river Colne when walking along one of the few public footpaths through the woods.
In order to create a site fit for wildlife we first need to remediate the existing location. Looking into a prospective future that I want to be carbon neutral and for the environment to be in a better state than it is in 2020, I need to create a programme of works that will remediate the site over time using carbon neutral methods which withdraws that contaminates and toxins from the environment but uses the surplus material in a positive manner rather than burning or burying the excess back into the environment.
Mycoremediation (from ancient Greekμύκης (mukēs), meaning "fungus" and the suffix -remedium, in Latin meaning 'restoring balance') is a method recommended to me by Hazem, in which mushrooms can be used in a novel way to remove toxins from the soil over the course of a few weeks. An idea I developed in my head for a bit, and briefly discussed with Hazem is to use the mushrooms as per the mycoremediation process, once complete - extract the mushrooms and create a bi-product such as fake leather (to tie into Huddersfield textiles culture) and/or insulation panels (newly developed mushroom insulation has been proven to be highly efficient), these new materials can be distributed amongst the Northern Power House to other sites requiring remediation prior to development. I believe that this idea will project Huddersfield to the front runner in the Industry4.0 within the Northern Powerhouse, becoming a production line of remediation and transformation of contaminated material.
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