Waste Wise volunteers needed!

Help CUESA green the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market! We are launching a Waste Wise Farmers' Market program on April 22 and 26, and we need your help to make it a success. As a Waste Wise volunteer, not only will you help divert waste from the landfill, you'll also help teach thousands of shoppers to become more waste wise. We need volunteers every Tuesday and Saturday beginning April 15. For more information, please contact Ashleigh Collier at ashleigh@cuesa.org.

Salmon season cancelled

The Pacific Fisheries Management Council voted yesterday to prohibit Chinook salmon fishing off the coasts of California and most of Oregon this year. Click here to read the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage of this issue >

Greenhouse Grown Farm Tour ~ Sunday, April 20

Spend a day visiting two farms that rely on greenhouses to help grow their crops: Bruins Farms in Winters and Orangewood Farm in Rumsey. This all-day bus tour costs $25 and will include lunch. Click here for more information and to buy tickets >

Local chefs and farmers pair up at Macy's ~ April 16

CUESA is partnering with Macy's Cellar again for a series of three cooking demonstrations and farmer/chef interviews. At the first event, on Wednesday, April 16, farmer Brandon Ross of Ella Bella Farm and chef Charles Phan of The Slanted Door will talk about how they are both staying true to their values of sustainable agriculture, seasonal produce, and worker’s rights as they grow their companies. Seating is first-come, first-served starting at 6 pm in the Union Square Cellar Kitchen at Macy's. A $10 donation to CUESA (tickets at the door) will get you a seat at the demonstration, a sample of the featured dish, a glass of wine from Benziger Family Winery, a canvas Ferry Plaza Farmers Market tote, and a sample of Origins' new organic skin care line.

Waste Wise Market Celebration ~ April 22 and 26

We're kicking off our new Waste Wise Market initiative with a heap of fun activities at our Tuesday and Saturday markets. Click here to see the schedule of events >

Public meeting about development on the waterfront ~ April 14

The Port of San Francisco is considering development options for Seawall Lot 351, a parking lot at Embarcadero and Washington Street that currently provides visitor parking for the Ferry Building and the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Interested citizens, neighbors, shoppers, and the development community are invited to share their ideas for development criteria for the project, including appropriate uses and the character of the development, at a meeting on April 14 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. For more information, visit the Port's website for the project >

Saturday, April 12 ~ Market to Table

10:30 am - Farmhouse cooks
Nigel Walker of Eatwell Farms will talk about his farm and demonstrate recipes using ingredients grown on his land in Dixon.

11:15 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration and book signing
Karla Oliveira of Conscious Eating Cuisine and co-author of Tassajara Cookbook

Saturday, April 19 ~ Market to Table

10:30 am - Meet the farmer

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration and book signing
James Peterson, author of Cooking

All programs will take place in front of the Ferry Building on the north side.

On April 22 and 26, CUESA is launching a new Waste Wise Farmers’ Market initiative. Through this program we will significantly reduce the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market’s environmental impact by composting and recycling most of the materials discarded at the market and reducing the amount of plastic bags and other packaging that leave our premises. Last week, we wrote about recycling our food through composting; today, we’re focusing on packaging.

From toys to phones to food and water, almost everything we purchase is encased, presented, or carried away in plastic or another packaging material. Both before and after it is used, this packaging has a significant impact on our environment. According to a US EPA statistic from 2005, 31.2% of municipal waste is generated from packaging. A good portion of this goes to the landfill; the rest is incinerated, recycled, or ends up littering our oceans and cities. Packaging also takes energy and natural resources to produce. Writes Daniel Imhoff in his book Paper or Plastic, “The downstream issues of collection, recycling, landfilling, and incinerating, while consequential, are dwarfed by the 'upstream' consequences of packaging production.” The production of packaging requires energy and natural resources like wood, metals, minerals and crude oil. Tree-harvesting, ore-mining and oil-drilling all have significant environmental impacts, including habitat degradation and pollution.

Recycling has a HUGE positive impact on the environment, because it takes fewer resources (like energy and water) to reprocess materials than to create them from scratch. For example, recycling an aluminum can takes 95% less energy than making an aluminum can from scratch. Reprocessing also reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

The city of San Francisco is on the forefront of reducing packaging waste. In 2007, the city initiated a ban on plastic carrying bags in large supermarkets. And the city’s latest announcement is a major boon for the environment: starting on Earth Day 2008, all non-compostable, rigid plastics will be accepted for recycling in the blue bins as well (only some rigid plastics are currently accepted). The city is making it increasingly easier to recycle and compost, which will help San Francisco meet its goal of diverting 75% percent of discarded materials from the landfill by 2010 and reaching zero waste by 2020.

Every week at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, we see inspiring examples of both sellers and shoppers seeking to reduce their environmental impact. Many sellers offer returnable or compostable packaging and encourage customers to “BYOB” (bring your own bag), as shown in this sign at the Tierra Vegetables stall. Waste-wise shoppers carry their own reusable tote bags, coffee cups, water bottles, and even spoons and plates. Still, we have a long way to go towards zero waste. More than one million plastic bags are distributed annually at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. At our information booth and at other events, 4,800 plastic bottles of water are consumed annually, most of which are used once and discarded. Until now, almost all materials discarded at the market (98% of which are recyclable or compostable) were wasted.

Starting on Earth Day, April 22, this is all changing…

What we’re doing

1. Handing out 10,000 reusable bags. If you're a local resident, come to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market on April 22 or 26 for a free reusable tote bag and use it whenever you visit the market and for all your other shopping needs.

2. No longer offering bottled water. Instead, we’ll offer delicious Hetch Hetchy water straight from the tap, free at our information booth to those who bring their own bottle or cup and for a small donation for those who need a compostable cup.

3. Providing Waste Wise stations. Waste Wise stations will include three bins: green for compost, blue for recycling, and black for garbage. Bins will be clearly marked and include information about what belongs in each bin. Waste Wise stations will also be attended by volunteers who will be happy to help you choose the right bin!

4. Working with market sellers to help them reduce packaging waste.

What you can do

1. Bring your own bags, containers, water bottle, coffee cup, plate and cutlery. While recycling saves energy and resources, reducing your consumption of packaging has even greater benefits.

2. Don’t take a plastic bag if you don’t need one. If every San Francisco resident reduced their plastic bag intake by just one bag a week, we would save 38,690,132 plastic bags per year, and all the resources and energy required to produce them.

3. Reuse plastic bags and food containers.

4. Recycle recyclables and compost compostables. Use the Waste Wise stations at the market, and get know what your municipality accepts for recycling and composting so that you can properly sort what you discard at home.

5. Buy products with recycled content. If there's no market for products that make use of recycled materials, there will be little incentive for reprocessors to accept our recyclables.

Some facts about recycling

• According to EPA calculations, recycling and composting in 2006 saved the energy equivalent of more than 10 billion gallons of gasoline!
• Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to power a light bulb for four hours.
• The greenhouse gases eliminated by recycling 7 million tons of metal is equivalent to removing 5 million cars from the road for one year!
• Recycling and reuse helps our economy! Currently, the recycling and reuse industries provide over 1.1 million jobs in the US and gross over $236 billion in revenues per year.

Resources

Click the links below to find out what's recyclable and compostable in your community.

Alameda - stopwaste.org

Contra Costa - www.wastediversion.org

Marin - marinrecycles.org

San Francisco - sfrecycling.com

San Mateo - www.alliedwastesanmateocounty.com

This is the most up-to-date information about which sellers will and won't be attending the market as of Friday, when we send this letter. If there are no changes to a seller's status, they will not be listed. To find out which farmers regularly attend each market, click here. Please understand that there are often last-minute changes--it's the nature of farming!

Saturday, April 12

In/returning: The Apple Farm, Ella Bella Farm, Chan's Nursery
Out: The Peach Farm, Bernard Ranches

Tuesday, April 19

In/Returning: Ella Bella Farm

Returning this month (weather willing): Torpedo and Stockton red onions, English peas, snap peas, and snow peas, rhubarb, basil, raspberries, squash blossoms, fresh bay leaves, miner's lettuce

Plentiful: Spinach, asparagus, avocados, green garlic, spring onions, kumquats, nettles, broccoli, rapini greens, artichokes, baby turnips, carrots, strawberries, mizuna, radishes and radish greens, fava beans, pastured eggs, chard, baby beets, fresh herbs

Winding down/limited supply: Brussels sprouts, tulips, citrus

Farms/Vendors that may be returning this month (weather willing): Ella Bella Farm, Happy Quail Farms, Shogun Fish Co., Balakian Farms, Lucero Organic Farms

Recipes for April

Strawberry Ceviche from Chris Borges, Taste Catering

Marinated Fresh Baby Artichokes from Linda Carucci, author of Cooking School Secrets for Real-World Cooks: Tips, Techniques, Shortcuts, Sources, and Hints

Spinach Salad a la Grecque from cookbook author Joyce Goldstein

Spring Greens Puree with Homemade Sourdough Crackers from Jessica Prentice, Wise Food Ways