Seneca College - RED 2017 - 11

Applied research
Dean Vanessa Williamson
shares her insights.
p. 12

Seneca love x 50
Fun facts about Seneca and
grads like David Common
to mark our birthday.
pp. 14-15

HELIX entrepreneurs

PRO
FILES

PHOTO: JOANNE RATAJCZAK

A Ripple effect on
sustainable farming

WHEN BRANDON HEBOR and Steven Bourne quit
their day jobs to start a green sustainable
venture together, you could say they had
bigger fish to fry.
Graduates of the Sustainable Business
Management (SBM) program, Brandon and
Steven have been working out of a narrow
shipping container parked at the Evergreen
Brick Works in Toronto. Most of the square
footage inside the container is taken up by
an aquaponics system they built themselves,
including two 300-gallon fish tanks.
The fish-about 150 tilapia-are the
biological engines of Ripple Farms, a foodgrowing project based on fish poop
and developed at Seneca's on-campus
incubator, HELIX.
"HELIX has been with us from the start,"
says Steven. "We've been connected with
people from a wide array of disciplines,
helping us navigate through this startup.
We would be months behind without their
advice and mentorship."
Ripple Farms features the first urban
farming unit of its kind in Canada with a
greenhouse built upon a shipping container.
Recently, SBM students took a field trip there

Steven Bourne (l) and
Brandon Hebor, founders, Ripple Farms.

to learn about aquaponics-the combination of fish farming with soil-less plant
cultivation to produce organic food-and
about Ripple Farms as a social enterprise
dedicated to putting people before profits.
The trip was sponsored by Seneca's
Alumni Student Experience Fund, which
provides students experiential learning
opportunities that connect them with successful grads like Brandon and Steven.
Since launching last November, Ripple
Farms has supplied its produce to top
restaurants in the Toronto area that value
a "farm-to-fork" motto. It has received a
SmartStart grant from the Ontario Centres of
Excellence to implement new technologies

and create opportunities for ongoing
research and unit sales. As well, support
from the Greenbelt Fund will help Brandon
and Steven with Local Lime Syrup, a new
product line made from a waste by-product
of their system to "close the loop" on sustainable farming practices. Best of all, a
Ripple Farms unit is now operating at
Newnham Campus.

Are you an entrepreneur, looking to develop your idea?
HELIX supports entrepreneurship in all sectors, with a
focus on innovative health and lifestyle products and
services. Learn more: senecacollege.ca/helix

RED

2017

11
http://www.senecacollege.ca/helix
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