Outside the Edenworks greenhouse, the company’s guests were sampling quinoa wraps and tilapia tacos prepared by The Market’s chef, Luke Wu, the scene illuminated primarily by the setting sun. Inside, we were standing in front of a 30-gallon drum of fish waste inside a greenhouse on the roof of a metal shop in East Williamsburg, but we couldn’t smell anything untoward.
“Things that are aerobically digesting are being broken down by healthy bacteria,” Mr. Green explained. When crap smells, that’s the scent of anaerobic bacteria digesting it. Everything about Edenworks’ greenhouse is carefully designed so that the aerobic bacteria do the heavy lifting.
“That’s one aspect that keeps aquaponics from becoming a big thing, the underlying microbiology,” Mr. Green told us, while we walked from the fish tanks over to the giant drum where the facility processed the suspended solids of the greenhouse’s fish population. “Suspended solids” is a nice way of saying “floating crap,” but fish waste isn’t wasted, in an aquaponics system. It is processed so it serves as food for the plants.