Guerilla gardening in Istanbul
Turning public market food waste into soil with hot compost method.
The project focuses on our daily food wastes and unused green spaces in urban areas. We obtained fertile soil by composting the food waste from the public market, as it sets an example on a small scale. In our neighborhood, two garbage truckloads of market waste come out of the market that is set up on Tuesday every week, and it is hard to imagine the amount of food wasted when we count the years. Not only market waste, but also the apartments we live in and the garbage that comes out of our sites, even if we don't realize it, it comes back to us negatively in the long run. Compost is simply a tool that allows circular management and economy to be implemented and to produce our own food as organically as possible.
The aim is to collect the food wasted and turned into soil with using hot compost method in 3 weeks. During the composting period, local people were participated. Many children and adults learned how to compost our food wastes into soil. Each turning was another workshop. After this project, many people will think twice when they will throw their wastes to the garbage.
Second part of the project was about creating a local garden where belongs to local people. They joined to design process and Municipality gave them 320 m2 land to the neighborhood. We designed together and the soil of the area came from public market's food waste. Also some locals gave their bokashi compost to help to produce soil. This soil has rich of organic matter and it doesn't need any pesticides or chemicals from outside. Now Konaklar neighborhood has its own urban garden.
Today one of the biggest problem of urban gardens has problem of ownership by local people. If they participate and help to design process to build the garden, then they will be the real owners of the urban garden after Nature. This process could be the solution of vandalism.
Total yearly worldwide 931 million tons of food is wasted. 7.7 million every year in Turkey tons of food goes to waste. This too in homes and restaurants globally 17% of ready-to-eat food go straight to trash.
