10:00 AM - 02:00 PM on Sat, 13 Sep 2025
Green Ellsworth Hosting Trash-talking Fair
On Saturday, September 13 from 10:00AM to 2:00PM at the Moore Community Center Green Ellsworth will be hosting a Trash-Talking Fair. It will offer fun, engaging and informative activities to highlight ways individuals, families, businesses, schools and our City can pre-cycle, recycle, repurpose and reuse to reduce the environmentally unsustainable and very expensive disposal of our trash.
Fair participants are encouraged to get involved by bringing items to contribute to a school and craft supply swap table and a food share table of excess garden produce or non-perishable food for the Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry. There will be a trash relay and scavenger hunt with prizes as well as up-cycling crafts, and adults as well as children will be able to use finished compost to pot up an edible plant to take home.
Displays, demonstrations and brief spotlight talks will profile ways in which local businesses, organizations, schools and other institutions are playing leadership roles in minimizing “waste” and forging more sustainable approaches by transforming so called “waste” into productive materials for use in our community. The City of Ellsworth will also be unveiling new developments around their solid waste management as well as ways we can all make their current program more effective. There will be a backyard composting demo, and the Maine Food Rescue program from the University of Maine’s Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions will be foregrounding ways we can all reduce food “waste” to a minimum.
A highlight of the event will be the launch of a pilot community composting project organized by Green Ellsworth, the Ellsworth School Department Food Service Program and Chickadee Compost. With 40% of our waste composed of food scraps and other organics, the goal is to provide a higher, more sustainable and cost effective local solution than trucking to landfills or incineration facilities. Composting is not new. It was used by Indigenous people and early settlers to enrich the soil and grow more food, and this Surry business is eliminating the need for longer distance trucking costs while transforming so-called waste into a productive commodity to support local, more sustainable food production. Composting is a key component of a healthy food system.
At the fair, residents in selected neighborhoods will be invited to sign up for weekly curbside food scrap collection to begin in October. Others will be able to sign up for drop-off collection. The first 50 families to sign up for curbside collection will receive a free composting bucket. This pilot project will also involve the phased rollout of food scrap collection at all three Ellsworth schools.
The public is encouraged to attend this free family-friendly fair. To learn more about the fair or how to sign up for the composting pilot project go to https://www.greenellsworth.org/community-events. To get involved in Green Ellsworth’s Waste Management Action Team and its many activities contact blackstm@uregina.ca or call 667-8878.
