Trash or treasure? Open Sauce waste audits kick off!

As part of our new circular economy project, Open Sauce we are conducting waste audits with our partner social enterprises. The aim of these audits is to uncover what valuable resources like excess produce from farmers and kitchen off cuts once destined for landfill can be diverted/reimagined into fabulous circular retail products.  

The first stage was to design a waste audit process, which enables our businesses to collect data on what is going into their waste streams. Every thing from coffee grounds, to hessian sacks and vegetable peelings is being counted. This waste audit has been created and tested by Cultivating Community and is now being conducted at STREAT and Melbourne Farmers Markets sites.

Once we know what precious resources we already have, it's on to the ideas phase: what tasty, beautiful and useful products can we make from them? This is an opportunity to see things we'd usually compost or recycle, and ask how we can make them work hard to become something valuable.

This project is supported by the Victorian Government’s Recycling Victoria Innovation Fund as part of the Circular Economy Business Innovation Centre.

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