Gaia Soil

Until recently I was (and I bet you were too) under the imperession that styrofoam was the least sustainable product created by man. In fact styrofoam has gotten such a bad wrap from environmental campaigns that I was thought it was literally only good for polluting the world and keeping my Chinese take-out food warm until it arrived at my door. I was wrong.

This past week I was working in the native plant garden of Union Square when I noticed that the soil was littered with little bits of Styrofoam. At first I was extremely discourage. Then, when I told my supervisor about this I was shocked when she informed me that in fact, styrofoam is an essential part of a new innovation in soil techonology called “Gaia soil.”

The idea of Gaia soil was created by Paul S. Mankiewicz to solve the problem of rooftop gardens being too heavy to be supported by many roofs. The significance of Gaia soil is thus two fold. It is an innovation in urban gardening because it allows less structurally sound roofs to facilitate gardens. On top of this it uses what is usually nothing more than a landfill’s dream substance, Styrofoam, by turning it into a useful material.

So how exactly how does Styrofoam become useful for green roofs? The thing about Styrofoam is that it is an extremely light material. Thus it makes what would be extremely dense and heavy soil lighter and therefore more suitable for roofs. Unfortunatley you cannot just pepper Styrofoam into your soil and throw it on your roof because Styrofoam on its own has properities that makes it repel water (hydrophobia) and thus your soil will dry out. However it can be treated so that it takes on the opposite qualities. When this happens the Styrofoam becomes a both a means of making soil lighter but also acting as a water retention agent which s important for rooftop gardens because they are often exposed to lots of wind.

I guess I should be completely honest and make it clear that you can’t simply start putting your old Styrofoam into the garden—your plants will die. Making styrofoam hydrophilic (“water-loving”) isn’t a simple process but, if done properly does make it a super useful product for green roofs. Ultimately it’s actually just crazy to think that we can make a something that is as indestructible and unsustainable as Styrofoam then turn around and use it to grow plants.

Anyways if you want to here if from a Pro here is the man himself.