There is a sustainability tour you can join and take with a leader to tell you the behind the scenes stuff or you can pick up a map and followed the route at your leisure.
Sustainability covers everything:
Stall holders supporting small farmers whose approach to farming and animal welfare they know and approve of,
Stall holders, marketing sustainable clothing, who know the people involved in the manufacture of the product. The idea is to be caring for and not hurting the environment and also cutting down transport pollution where possible.
Then there is recycling. Stall holders are encouraged to focus on this.
One example of recycling is the banana flour that Field, Barns and Co sell – all those odd shaped and other not usable bananas are made in to flour – try it in your baking. Field, Barms stock 35 Types of flour and make their butter on site –it is nothing like supermarket butter.
Field, Barns & Co butter made on site at the South Melbourne Market
Field, Barns & Co website
Atypic Chocolate is an example of knowing where your original produce comes from. Charles Lemai sources his cacao beans from small farmers some of them in the Solomon Islands. This means that the French Chocolatier knows the history of his beans and knows the growers personally. He explained his love of chocolate during the tour.
Charles Lemai from Atypic Chocolate talks about his passion
Some of Alypic Chocolate’s delicious products
Proper and Sons owner Eugene Lavery sources his produce from the market itself when he can and uses only local suppliers so he cuts down the kilometers the trucks cover to supply him. This is another aspect of sustainability - cutting down road usage and therefore all that pollution going into the atmosphere.
Chocolate and orange kisses from Proper and sons, South Melbourne Market
The sustainability tour covers 17 widely different stores as examples of the markets push for sustainability. Stalls holders work hard to find produce and clothes that do not harm the environment during their growth and manufacturing.
Theo The Label only uses fabric and manufactures where they can trace the history of the sources and approve of it.
My favourite aspect of the tour was the recycling plant and its production of garden fertilizer with the waste collected from stall holders. I have a bag to give my patio-growing vegetables a boost as we move into spring and toward summer.
Recycling at the South Melbourne Market
Soilfood
The Sustainability Circuit tour gives a new understanding of the market and a wider knowledge, for example I found out I could buy soap make from hemp seed oil. Hemp oil is ideal for sensitive skin.
Hemp oil soap for sensitive skins
Sustainability Circuit Map
What: - Sustainability month
Where:- South Melbourne Market
Corner Coventry & Cecil Streets
96 Tram from CBD – get off at the South Melbourne stop.
Car:-There is parking on top of the Market and some parking in the neighbouring streets ( a lot of street parking is Permit Only, so watch out for that)
