At Tiny Greens we are constantly looking for ways to make our business more environmentally friendly. One recent accomplishment in this area was to replace nearly all of the disposable items we use at the farm and the farmers’ markets with recycled and/or biodegradable products. These products include:

• Recycled toilet paper, paper towels, and deli paper
• Spudware Bioforks made from potato starch and packaged in cellulose
• Bagasse plates, trays, to-go boxes, and toothpicks made from expelled sugarcane
• Cups, lids, and shopping bags made from corn starch

Our forks, plates, trays, to-go boxes, toothpicks, cups, lids, and bags are all compostable, so instead of generating waste we are converting these products into nutrient-rich compost to use on the farm. We want to be sure that these products will actually biodegrade in a reasonable amount of time so we designated a corner of one of our compost heaps as a test section and will be digging around in a few months to make sure they’re gone!

We source these products from a company called Treecycle, which offers eco-friendly alternatives for conventional disposable products. Visit them at www.treecycle.org.

Hey Champaign-Urbana! In case you missed it, check out this great write-up from this Sunday’s News Gazette, front page of the Arts & Entertainment section.