What better way to cut your food miles, and ensure a fresh healthy lunch, than to grow your own vegetables at work! Eat Your Balcony is a program providing businesses with such an opportunity, through implementing corporate veggie gardens in spaces a little as one square metre.

The program is an initiative run by EcoCentre- a not-for-profit community organisation aimed at raising awareness about sustainable living and biodiversity. The team at EcoCentre provide the expertise and materials to set-up an office vegetable and herb garden, making the most of otherwise unutilised spaces such as balconies, roofs and carparks. Businesses are then supported in all aspects of maintaining the garden, with EcoCentre’s ongoing advice on new crops and changing seasons.

The benefits of sourcing fresh produce for the workplace are significant and numerous:

• Giving staff a reason to go outside at lunchtime, get some fresh air and potter in the vegetable garden.
• Growing your own salads for the lunchroom promotes healthy eating habits and one square meter of garden can provide ongoing salad leaves for several people.
• Composting your lunchroom waste via a worm farm which produces fertiliser for the vegetables.
• Increases awareness of weather, gardening, food miles and natural, organic processes.
• Staff may be inspired to replicate their experience at home and show off their new interest and skills to their friends.
• Adds another feature to a corporate Green Office program which may attract more people to get onboard.

Bede Doherty, Eco-Business Manager at EcoCentre, believes Eat Your Balcony is an inexpensive way for businesses to look after their staff, whilst reducing their carbon footprint.

“Any business that can provide staff with fresh and healthy lunch ingredients, and demonstrate exactly where their produce has come from, is going to be both a popular and an environmentally responsible employer,” says Doherty “This makes for fantastic staff morale and productivity, along with a workplace that is more attractive to potential employees.”

Furthermore, any profits from the Eat Your Balcony program are recycled back into supporting EcoCentre’s community work, especially with helping marginalised people improve their sustainability and cut their bills, along with funding sustainability education programs in schools.
For further information about the Eat Your Balcony program, contact EcoCentre on (03) 9534 0670, or visit www.ecocentre.com.