Let’s discuss sustainability education and grants! Lori de La Cruz is the Sustainability Project Coordinator at Mountain View College in Dallas, Texas where she provides hands-on learning projects and resources to the faculty to integrate sustainability into their curriculum across all departments. Listen in as Lori talks about her school’s Sustainability Program and how aquaponics plays a key part in it.
What started out as a community garden, the college fortunately received a federal STEM grant and a grant from Wells Fargo that allowed them to expand the whole food venture into building their aquaponics lab in an existing glass greenhouse in their campus.
Learn more as Lori talks about the challenges they encountered with their aquaponics system under intense Texan summer as well as closed loop hybrid systems, pillow stuffing as media for the vertical tubes, and other issues such as fungal infection and not being prepared for the enormous amounts of food that they grew. Other topics discussed are L-shaped tubes and air stones for constant aeration, water testing, off-gassing and other water treatment of city tap water, and the impact of our food system on the entire globe. Lastly, Lori gives us some ideas about grant funding.