Sustainable salad is being grown in urban shipping containers

Around the corner from the traffic-choked roundabout at Elephant and Castle, south-east London, are two unassuming shipping containers full of lettuce. In each, there are around 600 "heads" of various types. They grow vertically, lined up in rows, and are bathed in bright LED lighting which shifts between red and blue.

Next to me are green forest romaine, a bulbous lettuce with billowing leaves often used in cheeseburgers or paired with fried chicken. Further along are green butterheads, which have a flatter shape and are popular in those uneconomical salad bags you might find in supermarkets. Elsewhere there is surat, red romaine, and green and red oak tenderly growing.

All are cultivated by Crate to Plate, a new urban farming company with designs on building sites across the UK. The company uses hydroponic technology to grow food in cities - close to where it will be consumed - in 40ft shipping containers.

Unlike in traditional vegetable growing, which is a thirsty business, each batch of 600 lettuces needs only the equivalent of a household dishwasher's worth of water each day, according to Crate to Plate's co-founder Sebastien Sainsbury.

"The plants go into what we call 'plugs', made from organic peat moss from The Netherlands," Mr Sainsbury tells i.

"When you plant salads and vegetables using traditional methods, the soil absorbs about 80 per cent of the water. We use 95 per cent less than soil-based farming."

The produce can be delivered to customers in central London with, it is claimed, a zero carbon footprint.

"We're also working towards using coconut-based 'plugs' - we're doing all we can from a sustainability point of view."

Crate to Plate was founded in 2020, emerging during the pandemic with vertical farms popping up across London. There are now three farms on the Isle of Dogs and two in Kentish Town in addition to this one in Elephant and Castle. Mr Sainsbury says the next project will be in Stratford, before work begins to expand to Birmingham, and then Manchester.

"This month we're putting five [containers] down in Stratford, just 100m from the Olympic Stadium," he says.

The idea, Mr Sainsbury says, is to produce "sustainable" salads, herbs, and greens in major cities, distributing them "efficiently" to restaurants and consumers by way of electric van or bike.

Already, Crate to Plate has been selling to kitchens from Fortnum & Mason to the newly reopened fine-dining restaurant The Ledbury in Notting Hill, and from Francesco Mazzei's Mayfair restaurant Sartoria to the Andreas greengrocer in Chelsea Green - a favourite of Nigella Lawson.

In these climate-controlled containers, growing can take place year-round. Mazzei tells i he's been buying Crate to Plate's basil and rocket, which he would otherwise have to source from Italy, thereby racking up extra food miles. The foods might not be of the same quality as herbs and leaves grown in the sunshine, next to the Mediterranean, he says, but it's as close he can get in the UK, out of season.

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Source: Agritech Future