The idea for “foldable gardens” has been developed by Thom Bindels (http://thombindels.com/home-base/), a designer from Eindhoven, who created Desert Pioneer – a concept for honeycomb structured layers of cardboard that can be unfolded, filled with soil, and create small gardens even on rocks or in the desert.
The project “Leveraging Diaspora Contribution to Local Employment Creation in the Horn of Africa“ (in cooperation with the African Diaspora Policy Centre) brought Thom into contact with Teun Vogels, who had just created Cambisol (www.cambisol.com), a consulting company focussing on the prevention or restoration of land degradation through soil conservation.
Thom and Teun have meanwhile tested their concept Ecosystem Kickstarter in Uganda and demonstrated how the cardboard structures could rehabilitate eroded soil.
Since the “Leveraging …” project concentrated on regions with large refugee settlements, which receive thousands of boxes from the World Food Programme, the idea came up that these boxes could get a second life and be turned into “foldable gardens” in refugee camps.
To use the boxes of the World Food Programme in and around refugee camps to fight deforestation and to create allotment gardens to improve food security and daily diet, it would be desirable that the print of the boxes would no longer use ink using heavy metals, but a laser imprint (which could be cheaper and less problematic for the environment).
Discussions with stakeholders are ongoing.
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