Can an engineered soil made of locally-sourced recycled materials support healthy plants and functional green infrastructure in urban environments?
Through the Circular Soil initiative, OLIN Labs developed and tested a locally-produced waste-based soil that simultaneously reduces reliance on environmentally damaging materials and provides a sustainable outlet for major waste streams.
While landscape architects have become increasingly concerned with the lifecycle costs of our projects, landscape architecture practices continue to struggle to address aspects of our work that are fundamentally extractive and wasteful. Nowhere is this more evident than in the manufacturing of engineered soils from natural components (sand, mined topsoil, peat, etc.) for use in cities.
To address this problem, the Circular Soil Initiative aims to develop high-quality green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) soils for the urban forest and parks of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley using locally recycled glass-sand and food-waste compost. The Initiative aims to preserve the region’s natural areas, reduce waste, and support urban GSI implementation by producing a waste-based urban soil blend optimized for water quality, infiltration and plant health.
Photo: OLIN / Sahar Coston-Hardy