Closing the Loop at Saanich Neighborhood Place

August 1, 2025

Compost Education Centre board member Tina wears a lot of different hats at Saanich Neighbourhood Place, a neighbourhood house that provides child care, family, seniors, and community programs. Like other neighbourhood houses in Victoria, SNP has taken on a lot of food security initiatives to respond to community need. SNP provides free food to the community through their Best Babies, Family Dinner, Community Kitchen, and Community Fridge programming. Tina is the Head of Food Security and a chef at SNP: she teaches workshops, makes delicious and healthy meals for the community, and she manages all of the organization’s food rescue.

About 70% of the food distributed through SNP programming is food that is “rescued” or donated. SNP purchases the remaining 30% of food required. Tina and other SNP staff have developed connections with local farmers like Gatton House Farm and Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers that donate fresh produce. Neighbors and community members also donate any excess produce they might have, and SNP also receives rescued food from the Mustard Seed and Save On Foods.

The secret to making it all work? Volunteers, community connections, and Tina’s creativity. SNP relies on volunteers to pick up and transport food, and all the donations made by local growers are based on informal – and community-driven – relationships and community connections. And once Tina receives all the donated and rescued food, she crafts accessible menus and meals. She’s a wizard! She manages to figure out what to cook based on what’s available week-to-week.

You would think that Tina had enough on her plate (literally and figuratively!) without taking on more, but she has a vision for SNP and all community organizations in the region: composting and food-growing. Currently, SNP sends some of their organic waste to a local farm, some home with staff to compost at home, and the remainder into a green bin service that they pay for. SNP produces about one full green rollaway bin of organic waste a week, and they’d love to be composting that waste on-site instead to be able to support food growing.

Tina composts at home, and she notices a big difference in her garden. She has a simple composting system, and she notices a huge impact on her garden by amending her soil with the compost twice a year. She wants everyone to be composting more because of how it’s so much better for our environment. Instead of using fertilizers that run off into our waterways, we could instead be “closing the loop” and producing compost that supports our gardening initiatives. It just makes sense to keep all that valuable organic material on-site.

SNP has some underused green spaces that could accommodate a composting system and some growing gardens. Tina and her SNP colleagues see a real opportunity to integrate composting and food growing education into all of their programming – and so do we! We’re looking for funding to support them in establishing those composting systems and accessing whatever education needed.

Posted in Blog, Board, Composting, Featured, Food Security