Maplewood Richmond Heights School District 

Maplewood, MO

 In 2012 we began our journey with indoor gardens by building an aquaponics laboratory. After one year of experimenting with this new journey, we have seen numerous upgrades we can make to increase our sustainability efforts in this area. We currently have three systems. Two systems would be considered aquaculture at this point and it is our goal to add grow beds to both turning them both into aquaponics systems. Last year we produced lettuce, kale, and various herbs that were served in our school cafeteria.

The impact of this laboratory reaches beyond our community and even state. We currently share our data for water, fish, and plants in this laboratory with other schools and businesses in Missouri and Illinois. Students visit this aquaponics laboratory to study energy transfer, flow rates, water quality, growth rates of plants in comparison to a typical garden and our aquaponics garden. Currently our aquaponics laboratory and indoor garden is visited multiple times a week by our two sustainability classes and our afterschool sustainability club.

For a visual representation of the laboratory check out the Aquaponics video above and view more on the Sustainability Playlist.