We are a sustainable first urban Microgreen farm based in Islington, growing nutritious and delicious crops vertically.
Hyper local.
Tasty Micros is a low to no food miles supplier – meaning that we only sell locally. This is what makes our microgreens a sustainable superfood. Pomegranates and avocados might also be superfoods but they have to be airfreighted in from the other side of the world. All of those air miles are certainly not good for the environment.
Another key advantage of our ‘hyperlocality’ is unmatched taste and freshness. Our greens could be on your plate on the day of harvest. Other greens, however, typically take around 8 days before they even find themselves into stores and supermarkets! This causes the nutrients to degrade and the loss of that fresh flavour you get with microgreens.
Seaweed nutrients & no soil.
20% of global CO2 emissions comes from ploughing fields alone. Everytime we plough fields nutrients are lost and CO2, previously locked in the ground, is emitted back into the atmosphere. This far outweighs the CO2 captured during the plant’s growth. This intensive farming also leads to soil erosion and a decrease in the nutrients in our foods. However it doesn’t have to be this way, agriculture can leave the environment in a better state. That’s what we aim to do here at Tasty Micros. You can find out more about soil health here.
We use organic seaweed based fertiliser and coco coir growing media. Not only is seaweed fertiliser rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, but it also contains lots of micronutrients and active agents which help our microgreens grow so fantastically.
Seaweed is also very sustainable in itself. When growing, it requires no nutrient input and instead gets everything it needs from the seawater itself. As it grows it pulls carbon out of the ocean, which in turn allows the oceon to absorb more atmospheric CO2. Some of the seaweed naturally falls to the bottom of the ocean, and permanently captures carbon. Like conventional crops, most of the carbon sequestered by the seaweed in our fertiliser eventually breaksdown and finds its way back into the atmosphere as part of the carbon cycle. The difference is no soil is ploughed, and so there is no extra carbon removed from our precious soil reserves. If we all used a little more seaweed it could make a big difference on global CO2 emissions!
What’s coco coir? Coco coir is a soil-like fibre made from the husks of coconuts and is a waste product of that industry. Our growing medium is the environment in which we sow the seeds. The coco coir blocks come in dried compact blocks which we rehydrate with seaweed-infused water. This allows for efficient transportation to our urban farm. Coco coir is a much more sustainable equivalent to the more commonly used peat-based growing mediums. You can find out more about peat here.
We hope to one day become self-sufficient by composting and reusing all our waste roots and growing medium. Help us become more sustainable by buying tasty micros today!
Organic everything.
Our entire supply chain is organic. We use organic seeds, organic coco coir as our growing medium, and organic seaweed gives our microgreens the power to grow.
Packaged with care.
Our packaging is made from recycled PET, a sustainable material which can be recycled or reused at the end of it’s life. We believe this is currently the most sustainable way to package our products.
Why use plastic at all? Microgreens require air tight packing to give them their shelf life of 10 days from harvest. Our resealable packaging helps maintain their freshness, which is crucial for retaining the flavours and nutrients that make microgreens so amazing!
What about ‘compostable’ plastics made from plant based materials such as PLA? Compostable plastics are not compostable at home, they require industrial composting facilities where they are broken down with special microbes. If you try and compost them at home you could be waiting up to a 1000 years! These plastics are also not currently recyclable either, and in reality just end up at landfill – not quite so sustainable after all!
Our recycled PET containers help fund recyclers, which we think makes them the most sustainable solution available.
Sustainable utilities.
We use highly efficient LED’s in our vertical farm which are powered by our renewable electricity provider. This means our greens are grown carbon-free, and in a way which helps fund renewable electricity generators. Tasty Micros operates at times of least electricty demand, helping to balance the grid loads and preventing excess electricity from being wasted.
Our system uses up to 90% less water than conventional crops. This is achieved through our highly optimised watering and transpiration recovery system which allows us to recycle water given to the plants.
