Recycling fruits and vegetables at Princess Antoinette park

The Princess Antoinette Park is an environmentally friendly place in the Principality and is a popular place for children to play. Since the month of January and with the help of the park’s gardeners, the City Council of Monaco has set up a weekly collection of unsold fruits and vegetables from local supermarkets. This unused produce feeds the animals in the park and helps combat food waste.

The Princess Antoinette Park is a prized place for people of all ages. People go there every day to deposit uneaten vegetables or banana peels, for example, in one of the three composting sites in the park, under the hungry gaze of animals like chickens, who can eat almost anything.

“Since January, this Park’s initiative, which functions all year round, began recuperating fruits and vegetables that are not sold on the market. We collect the unused food every Monday and it’s enough to feed the animals all week long, which gives them a varied diet and makes them very happy.  It also alleviates garbage from the supermarkets and it suits our campaign against wasting food,” said Marjorie Crovetto-Harroch, who is a delegate for ‘Cadre de Vie’, which promotes sustainable development.

Sustainable development is a priority amongst the workers and gardeners at the park.

“We manage to re-use everything.  We put things in the compost, the decomposition of fruits and vegetables which then become rich soil.  When we have pedagogical activities with schools, they recuperate the soil from the compost sites and we plant vegetables, lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes together, which teach the children about the ecological system from waste to food,” said Frederic Sydorow, Chief of the Princess Antoinette Park Team.

“Different schools come here to attend classes and panels and when the children come back to the park, they explain the ecological process to their parents,” said Patrick Charpentier, Co-Chief of the Team.

“We have olive-trees, carob trees and other types of trees in the park.  To avoid throwing away the pruned or fallen branches, which is something that used to happen, we put them in a wood chipper and make wood chips for our permaculture, which helps the vegetables to grow,” said Frederic Sydorow.

At the Princess Antoinette Park, nothing is wasted, everything is transformed and re-used. Do not hesitate to bring your compost to the park.