Beicology: Have Environmentally Friendly Fun at Farm to Neighbors' Zero Waste Festival, Nov 26

Kyle Mullin | Nov 22, 2017 8:30 am | Add a comment | 1112 reads

It might have seemed like a minor thing to many of us, perhaps even insignificant – plastic bags being doled out by vendors at the Farm to Neighbors (F2N) market that customers could use to carry their purchases home. Yet that routine practice was enough to give F2N founder Erica Huang pause.

“When I saw we were producing a lot of plastic bags everytime we come shop, I thought it was kind of a shame, because we’re promoting a sustainable lifestyle, but still generating so much waste.”

This lead Huang to kickstart one of F2N’s biggest initiatives yet. Slated for Nov 26, the market’s first-ever Zero Waste Festival (ZWF) will feature a “zero-waste market” with discounts for shoppers who bring their own bags, workshops about sustainability including a how-to for home composting, an ecologically inspired art exhibit, and more.

Promising as the initiative to make F2N waste free may be, it has by no means been free of hurdles. Huang recalls how “it was a very challenging task to convince some of our vendors to stop giving out plastic bags. They all wanted to do this, but when the customers come and don’t bring bags of their own to put their items in, and the vendors don’t provide the bags, then people just won’t shop. It’s very inconvenient.”

In the months leading up to the Nov 26 ZWF, Huang and her F2N cohorts sent messages to market regulars in a WeChat group encouraging those patrons to bring used clean bags for their own use or to donate for a stockpile that could be given to other patrons. “It’s tough because we run out of these secondhand bags way faster than people’s donations. So we need people to know. We want to promote this lifestyle and mindset more, and we wanted to get more people involved because that will give this movement more power, because as you know waste is a huge issue in China.”

That lead Huang and the others to host small eco-friendly workshops at F2N that worked as trial runs for the upcoming ZWF. One of those workshops tasked participants with a “Seven Day No Delivery Challenge” to cut down on their plastic cutlery usage and packaging waste at lunchtime. “Some of them thought they couldn’t live without waimai for seven days,” Huang recalls with a laugh about some of the participants. “But we would encourage them in the group chat to stick to it, and we also sent them tips about simple things they can cook up easily at the farmer’s market.”

As such smaller initiatives gained momentum, Huang set to work on a bigger festival. She built ties with Friends of Nature, China’s oldest and arguably biggest NGO, which has helped F2N throughout the past year with zero-waste initiatives. The NGO has experience making marathons and cross country races waste-free, but next to no experience with waste-free markets, making a partnership with F2N enticing. For ZWF, Huang also partnered with an organization called the Ginko Foundation, which covered costs for the event and introduced Huang to other helpful contacts, one of them being Bamboo Bikes, an aptly named organization that builds bicycles out of bamboo, and who agreed to put on an exhibition at the festival teaching participants how to make such eco-friendly, pedal powered vehicle of their own.

“Through these small events, we hope people get inspired,” Huang says of the smaller zero-waste events, the Nov 26 festival, and future such initiatives. As participants gather for the Bamboo Bikes exhibit, or learn how to compost at one of the festival’s seminars, or just use more sustainable bags when they buy from the market’s vendors, Huang hopes that it will only be the beginning of their journey to greater sustainability. She says: “It’s easy to live more of a zero-waste lifestyle, you just need to remind yourself to refuse excess things you don’t need, forgoing things that are instantly convenient and just be more mindful.”

The Zero Waste Festival will take place at the weekly F2N market at The Grand Summit on Nov 26 from noon to 6pm. For more information click here or see the poster below.