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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Damien Gayle

Food scraps and mushrooms: the closed-loop garden behind the world’s first community-powered sauna

Interior of the sauna at R-Urban Poplar, showing wooden benches
The community powered sauna at R-Urban Poplar in Tower Hamlets. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

On a stiflingly hot and dusty morning at the height of the summer’s third heatwave, traffic thunders down the A12 arterial route through east London. A high, red-brick wall rises by the road. What few passersby will realise is that this ivy-topped wall shelters an urban oasis, within which sits an unprecedented sustainable project.

The world’s first “community-powered” sauna – heated by food waste from residents of the neighbouring housing estate – is set to open here.

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