Photo: Cycloponics
A French company is making best use of abandoned underground parking lots, by turning them into organic mushroom farms that produce delicious fungi.
The project is being run by a called 'Cycloponics' and is backed by the local government.
Now that the project is up and running, it is producing a huge quantity of high-quality mushrooms including, shitake, oyster, white button , and mini-greens, and everything is delivered by bike.
The underground parking lots, which were no use to anyone, are the perfect place to grow mushrooms, which thrive in low-light and damp environments. At present, from three separate lots, a team of 10 working for Cycloponics is able to harvest between 100 to 200 kilos of mushrooms per week.
Theo Champagnat, who runs the project, told reporters:
"70% of people live in towns today, and in this population there is a demand for local and organic products like ours."
On their Facebook, Cycloponics says:
"Cycloponics is a Strasbourg-based enterprise that develops innovative urban agriculture concepts to grow high-quality produce. We are now expanding our activities in Paris. Many more cities to come!"
The Paris mushroom project was sparked with the help of an initiative launched by the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo called 'Reinventing Paris—The Subterranean Secrets of Paris', which called on architects, business people, artists and freelancers, to present projects that could utilise abandoned car-lots and other abandoned spaces. Many car-lots in Paris, mostly built under apartment buildings, were left empty as more and more Parisians opted for public transport.
Cycloponics felt they were the perfect fit for this project as they had already developed other underground and subterranean mushroom growing projects elsewhere in France. Their first mushroom operation was located in Strasbourg, while another more recent operation has been set up in Bordeaux.
[h/t: Good News Network]
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