Sustainability

Queen Victoria Market aims to provide its customers with a high quality lifestyle experience. We consider that running a sustainable operation is one element of this experience.

We are committed to ensuring that our operating activities occur with minimum environmental impact. Below are some of the initiatives introduced to ensure that we achieve this.

Waste Wise Events

Queen Victoria Market is committed to minimising its impact on the environment.

At the Suzuki Night Market and Geelong Night Market, we are marking an effort to reduce our impact on the environment through litter control, reducing waste and recycling.

Single-use plastic bags for packaging are banned; all packaging including take away food packaging, is either of paper, cardboard or recycled plastics.

Recycling Program

Most of the Market waste is produced from the processing of food or from food packaging.

The Market has an extensive recycling program that includes recycling the following wastes:

Green waste which is recovered for stockfeed and fertiliser
Fat and bone which is used in blood and bone fertiliser
Fish offal which is collected and processed for stockfeed and fertiliser
Fats from grease traps and cooking oils from deep fryers
Paper and cardboard
Glass, PET Bottles and cartons
Polystyrene
Waxed Cardboard
Timber / Steel

Solar Energy

1328 solar panels are installed on the Market roof providing electricity for the Market’s activities. Commissioned in 2003, at the time it was the largest urban solar panel installation in the southern hemisphere.

The panels follow the angle of the existing roof line, while the 80 inverters needed rest in the roof space under the eave line of the sheds minimising the visual impact of the installation on the heritage listed sheds.

An interpretive panel containing live information on the solar energy production levels is located in front of the Meat Hall on Queen Street.

The installations generates around 252 megawatts of electricity or 30% of the Market’s electrical needs and bi-directional metres allow the generated electricity to be available for the Market’s use or to flow to the grid when not required.

Water Harvesting

Unfortunately the operation of the Market means that large amounts of water need to be used to clean the Market to ensure public health. Harvesting water from the Market roof and using it in non-food areas is one way of reducing our potable water consumption.

A 600 cubic metre water storage tank is installed under the Queen Street roadway. This provides water for flushing the toilets at the most heavily used of the Market’s four toilet blocks and is expected to reduce the Market’s potable water consumption by around 25%. Saving approximately 6 Olympic swimming pools of water each year.

The Market’s existing storm water system was modified to create a closed system that captures only the water from the roof of the sheds and not the ground water run off - ensuring the quality of the captured water.

An underground tank was favoured as this would not add visual clutter to the historic site. Under Queen Street was selected as the ideal location for the tank. In addition to that location’s other advantages; it is located outside the boundary of the cemetery meaning that excavation would not disturb any remains.

A waffle design ensures that the storage tank is stable enough to carry vehicle traffic including forklifts.

Storm Water Quality

Ground water run off is not captured for storage and is allowed to enter the normal storm water system.

The Market’s storm water drains are designed to ensure that storm water entering the drainage system is of a reasonable quality.Filter baskets and specially designed grates filter out any solids - plastic and large vegetable matter.

Diversion pits prevent the initial run off water that might be contaminated by organic material from entering the storm waters system by diverting it to sewer. Only once the flow rate reaches a certain level is it diverted back to the storm water system.

The Market has also received funding assistance from Melbourne Water as part of its Lower Yarra litter strategy, a project intended to ensure that the storm water entering the Lower Yarra system is free from litter and other contaminant.

That funding allowed us to develop an education program for the Market’s 500 general stallholders. The program included employing two part time education officers whose role was to educate traders on the impact of litter on waterways and to instruct traders in the correct disposal of rubbish.

The success of that program recently lead to a further grant for a similar program in the fruit and vegetable section which will include educating traders in separating different waste streams.

The Future

In 2010 we expect to begin construction of a new recycling building to better deal with our waste.

In addition to providing better facilities for the storage and sorting of packing materials, the building will also house a bio-gas/co-generation plant. This technology is already in domestic and commercial use in Europe but is little known here in Australia. Co-generation plants can take a variety of different organic waste streams including a limited amount of paper and cardboard and convert it to green electricity and heat.

There are two major benefits of this technology for the Market; its ability to accept mixed organic wastes; and by processing all organic waste on site we eliminate the high cost and energy associated with the transport of materials to the recycler.

It is expected that this process will produce sufficient green electricity to meet the Market’s remaining electrical requirements.This construction will include additional rain water storage tanks for harvesting rain water from the neighbouring buildings. This water will be used for flushing toilets in another of the Market’s toilet blocks.

Other projects planned include water sensitive urban design treatments for the car park and internal streets. As well as greening and softening the space, specially designed garden beds will capture and filter out petroleum products from water run off before allowing clean water to enter the storm water system.