Soilless Soil awarded William Penn Foundation’s Watershed Protection grant

OLIN Labs is thrilled to announce that the Soilless Soil Research Initiative​ has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the William Penn Foundation!

Among 13 grantees awarded Watershed Protection grants at the Foundation's November board meeting, totaling a combined $2.7 million, this twelve-month grant will support The McHarg Center at Penn and OLIN Labs team in the next phase of the Soilless Soil research project in order to establish locally recycled crushed glass as a sustainable alternative to the sand currently used in green stormwater infrastructure projects.

This next phase will include a mesocosm study, procurement analysis, and development of a trial soil specification. In the research team’s preliminary work conducting a comparative life cycle assessment of glass-sand vs natural sand, a campus feasibility study, and a 16-week greenhouse growth trial we demonstrated that glass-based topsoil can support healthy plants. We are now looking forward to painting a more complete picture of the real-world impacts of material specification on watershed health and increasing the economic and environmental sustainability of Philadelphia’s green stormwater infrastructure.

Congratulations to our research team, including Dr. Sasha Eisenman and Dr. Josh Caplan of Temple University's Tyler School of Art and Architecture’s Landscape Architecture and Horticulture Department and Tim Craul of Craul Land Scientists in partnership with The McHarg Center at Penn and our OLIN Labs team!

See also Landscape Architecture Magazine’s take on the project, here: https://olinlabs.com/blog/2019/9/6/soil-less-soils-in-lam