Soilless Soil awarded EPA Funding

OLIN Labs is excited to announce that the Soilless Soil Initiative has been granted a $400,000 project award by the EPA!

OLIN is one of only nine small businesses nationwide to receive this two-year project award. With this funding, the OLIN Labs team and our collaborators will be able to continue our research into replacing mined sand in engineered soils with recycled glass-sand.

Building on our research since 2017 into how recycled glass-sand performs in soil blends and how it can be manufactured locally, our team is pursuing several research goals in the next two years:

Field Experiment: After several rounds of testing the performance of glass-based soil (GBS) in the greenhouse and lab, we’re ready to test our GBS prototype in the field in a full-size bioretention basin!

Pilot GBS Manufacturing Process: OLIN Labs and a variety of local material processing businesses and nonprofits are collaborating to begin the production of our GBS prototype. In addition to providing GBS for the field experiment, this pilot production phase is intended to position local businesses to scale up GBS production in the future to support future municipal demand for the material.

Technical Planning: While our work is currently centered in Philadelphia, in the long term we aim to encourage municipalities nation-wide to convert their waste materials into recycled soil. Building from an expanded understanding of the constraints and opportunities of GBS production developed through our work in Philly, we’re planning to put together a free and easily shareable roadmap document that other municipalities could use to begin manufacturing GBS themselves.

Please check back for updates throughout 2022-23, and congratulations to the whole Soilless Soil research team!