CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — As a full-time chemist, it's only natural that Michael Stoeling built a homemade contraption to grow plants in his garage.
“What you're doing is you're growing plants, essentially, without soil,” he said.
Stoeling said he first started growing plants five years ago, amid a struggle with food insecurity.
“As my interest in plants grew, my food insecurity lessened,” he said. “So, I learned more about plants. I learned more about different ways of growing and learning, but it was to address my food insecurity."”
What started as a need then turned into a passion, which has now turned into a business called Handling the Earth.
“I tried to create an artistic thing that is not only artistic but also is efficient and … handled in a way, so it's called Handling the Earth,” Stoeling said.
Stoeling grows plants and stages them in repurposed vessels for sale. The goal, he said, is to spread awareness about food insecurity in Chicago and to promote sustainability.
“Growing house plants was a sustainable thing for the most part,” he said. “So that's why we've chosen house plants to sell. I source my vessels as thrift. So, everything is reused, as far as the container the plants are going to inhabit and also down to the soil, I tried to use regenerative soils.”
Stoeling said 21% of sales go to World Food Bank, which works to build sustainable solutions to food insecurity.
“Hopefully that'll just kind of be a stake in someone's mind that, ‘Oh, I got into plants because this person was selling me plants that was giving donations to food insecurity,’” he said. “And it just keeps the topic circulating, keeps things in flux and hopefully, fundamentally gives some progress.”
You can find Stoeling's store on his Instagram.
He'll be hosting an Instagram auction near late October and is looking to involve other creators.
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