see how local artisans are creating sustainable eco-friendly products
Visit a community of 25 makers who practice interactive and sustainable methods by sharing spaces, resources, tools, and machinery on a 2.5 acre industrial site that once housed an oxygen plant.
The vision of Paul Discoe, master craftsmen and Zen priest, these regenerative artisans, urban farmers, and food purveyors have dedicated their life’s work to inventive ways to create closed loop systems that enable the different tenants to reduce and upcycle materials and waste streams.
This unique collective of environmentally progressive artisans are working on projects that include:
The vision of Paul Discoe, master craftsmen and Zen priest, these regenerative artisans, urban farmers, and food purveyors have dedicated their life’s work to inventive ways to create closed loop systems that enable the different tenants to reduce and upcycle materials and waste streams.
This unique collective of environmentally progressive artisans are working on projects that include:
- A Japanese bistro where buckwheat is milled onsite and turned into handmade soba noodles daily, and the food waste is used for compost or up-cycled to create animal feed. The okara, a soy product leftover from the tofu making process, is turned into millet for animal feed for the chickens that live on their small urban farm next to the bonsai garden. Their vegetable oil is reused as biofuel for cars, and the restaurant takes advantage of the 2,000-square-foot aquaponic greenhouse to grow its own food.
- Run on solar power, with an aquaponic greenhouse, the plants are grown from the fish waste, while they in turn clean the water for the fish to live in, and turn liquid food waste into fermented plant juice for plant fertilizer.
- A sake brewery is creating traditional brewed small batches using single-origin rice grown in the Sacramento Valley.
- Responsibly foraged California coast seaweed is created into high-quality seaweed snacks.
- A snackeria produces delicious prehispanic-style edible insects in a “farm” housed within a shipping container, but creepy-crawly adventures don’t end there: you can also see how worms aid in the biochar and composting process.
- A 40-year old sawmill utilizes urban trees that the lumber industry usually regarded as waste, to create beautiful mill slabs and furniture, working hard to compost the sawdust and make sure wood waste from the Bay Area is upcycled.
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“O2AA is a great place to see the inner workings of some of Oakland’s (and the Bay Area’s!) coolest and most inspiring sustainable, waste-alleviating projects in a space smaller than a city block. One of my favorites is Ponderosa Millworks where you see huge fallen/aesthetically-cut-down trees salvaged from wasteful disposal and turned into furniture. My other favorite is Don Bugito, where 1000s of the next hottest zero-emission protein sources are raised to be sold as a snack - bugs!”
- Sarah Ellwood
Digital Marketing Consultant |