Food Scraps Recycling / Waste Free Farmers Market

The Vancouver Farmers Market piloted a Food Scrap collection at their West End Farmers Market this year to great success.  They had many residents from multi-family buildings (read apartments) come to the market to compost their food waste.  The market charged a small fee for the collection ($2), and all the compost was collected and taken to a facility.

It is the markets hope that eventually this will be a closed loop system, with the compost available for sale at the market, eliminating the fee for deposit.

I think this is a great fit for our Farmers Market, and would love to see the idea take off.  It would be great branding for Village, and would be a great service to offer in the city.

I would also like to see a Waste Free Farmers Market, which in my head looks like this:

- we collect donations of those reusable shopping bags that people seem to have millions of (I know I sure do).  We also make reusable shopping bags, and provide mugs / glasses for coffee / water

- Customers pay a deposit fee and receive a card.  Each week at the market they can trade their dirty bags for clean ones, and at the end of the season they get their deposit back minus a small service charge if all bags loaned are returned.

I think this is an easy way to reduce waste at the market, and am excited to see it take off, are you?