Gaia is the Greek goddess of the Earth, and as such, she might be surprised to find a soil that mixes compost and polystyrene is named after her.
But she might be pleased to learn that Gaia Soil, uses recycled material and can demonstrably turn city rooftops into living oasis that cool the building and surrounding environment and save energy during hot summer days.
And ideally, Gaia Soil will put some green in the pockets of the farmers who make it at Hitsman Farm in LaGrangeville, shredding recycled polystyrene and mixing it in with pectin and clay and compost to make soil suitable for rooftops due to its light weight and ability to absorb moisture that can then evaporate or transpire through plants. And it is extremely fertile,
“Anything you can grow will grow in Gaia Soil,” said John Hitsman. “If it will grow in dirt, it will grow in Gaia Soil.” Hitsman and his son, Dan, are perfecting techniques for making the soil using modified farm machinery to mix large batches of the formula.
Gaia Soil is the patented invention of Paul Mankiewicz, a biologist and plant scientist who is executive director of The Gaia Institute, a Bronx-based nonprofit that undertakes “ecological engineering” and environmental restoration.
Though he has held the patent for several years, Mankiewicz only sought to commercialize Gaia Soil about five years ago to help finance operations for the institute.
“He arrived at our doorstep one day,” said Hitsman of the day he met Mankiewicz, who had come to the farm after another farmer turned down his idea for making the mixture. “He approached me with this is what I want to do. I can do it in my small-scale laboratory, but I want to figure out a way we can do it with machinery we can afford.”
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Untreated polystyrene
“The first day when he left I had no idea how to do it, but it suddenly occurred to me ”“ use a feed grinder mixer. And when I tried that it worked fine,” Hitsman said. “So a couple of days later he (Mankiewicz) came up and saw it and was tickled pink.”
But that original idea was too labor intensive to work commercially and so Hitsman and his son have been tinkering with production. “We”™ve been several years getting to the point where we are now,” Hitsman said. “The machinery that we use, we are basically adopting farm equipment to do what we want to do.”
He said the process they have devised could be ramped up quickly if the capital to invest in heavy-duty machinery was available. And that possibility is gaining ground, he said, noting that Mankiewicz was discussing licensing agreements with investors and that interest in Gaia Soil is growing rapidly.
“So far this year orders are already double the orders for all of last year, so it is really picking up steam and growing,” Hitsman said. “And I”™m really surprised it”™s doing so well in a recession.”
The successful installation of a 12,500-square-foot green roof using Gaia Soil on the Linda Tool & Die Co. building in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn last summer may account for the flourishing prospects.
Typically a Gaia Soil roof would be six inches thick, though thickness varies with the desired fauna to be grown, said John Halenar, a spokesman for the Gaia Institute, who said that it is serving like subsoil holding moisture and nutrients “but the benefit is it is ultra lightweight.”
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Treated with pectin
A cubic yard of conventional soil, about a front loader bucket load full, weighs some 2,700 pounds. A cubic yard of Gaia Soil weighs 270 pounds. And it provides a beneficial reuse for Styrofoam that is otherwise discarded in landfills. “People like the idea it uses a lot of recycled material,” Halenar said.
AÂ Gaia Soil roof is more expensive to install than conventional roofing, although the gap is narrowing, Halenar said. The institute does not do installation, but has lists of landscape architects and roofing companies who do.
A conventional roof costs about $20 per square roof, while he said a green roof could cost $25 per square foot, depending on how elaborate a project is sought. Some companies have installed lawns, other have extensive roof gardens.
He said Europe has far more green roofs than the United States and experience there shows they require less maintenance and can last 50 years, since they don”™t deteriorate in weather the way conventional shingles do. Chicago and Philadelphia are trailblazers for green roofs domestically, he said, but recently tax incentives are being offered in New York City and that has spurred interest in the idea.
Halenar said a licensing arrangement would be used to generate revenue to benefit the institute, so it could pursue its mission of ecological restoration and integration between civilization and natural systems.
He said that the Linda Tool & Die building has been generating information since it was installed last June.
“Data is one of the missing links on this technology,” Halenar said. “We can say we think there are going to be savings, but there hasn”™t been a lot of data gathered. A full four-season experience on a building will really be able to show results.”
The idea was originally to make the material in the Bronx but he said it was too costly and so they sought a rural locale.
“We looked at it as a good place not only to do our manufacturing, but a way to help farmers going through the tough economic times everyone is going through supplement their income,” Halenar said. Â “We love working with John Hitsman. He is so creative and innovative, he has come up with ways to do the manufacturing that is much less expensive than we thought.”
