Carrefour looks, buys and invests in ecology and, on this wave, it opened in France, at the end of April, 1.200 square meters of urban vegetable garden on the roof of the covered car park of the Carrefour hypermarket in Villiers-en-Bière with the intention of doing so on other French sites as well, creating greenhouses on the roofs according to very precise rules: no pesticides, no substances at risk and making truly local and organic fruit and vegetable supplies available. The large vegetable garden, created after careful preparatory work by a multidisciplinary team, was entrusted to the students of a local high school who, thanks to the high school's specialization in agriculture, will transmit to customers and students of other institutes valuable information on how create greenhouses for urban gardens everywhere. Since May, the harvests of these 1.200 square meters of fruit trees, horticultural plants, aromatic and ornamental herbs have been sold in the hypermarket. This initiative is only the first of a series that will be extended to the other sites of the multinational, obviously taking into account the different structural types of the buildings.
Plants and fish together on the roofs
The Carrefour program is not the only one but it is by extension; in 2015 the Swiss company UrbanFarmers started the first pilot activity on the roof of an industrial plant in Bale, a fish farming in an aquaponic culture, an ancient technique but revived in the 70s, which allows you to create an ecosystem that brings together fish farming and the cultivation of plants in water. A highly ecological natural circuit that obviously pays off, since in a single environment the harvest of vegetables and abundant fishing is obtained with simple additions of minerals but without chemicals. In the case of d Bale, 250 tons of plants are produced on the 5 square meters of UrbanFarmers and 850 kg of fish are caught and a large part of this "harvest" is marketed in the nearby Migros supermarket. The UrbanFarmers company has launched similar initiatives in Germany and is also studying a project for France and the United States. This first singular experience is part of the great trend - in very strong growth - which it favors proximity, local products that give guarantees very little use of chemicals. Thanks to urban crops and farms, the roofs of large buildings such as those of supermarkets become profitable and productive spaces with immediate effects, with decidedly low costs, and with very positive results also in terms of image.
Source: Paula's house
