THE City of Whittlesea and CERES celebrated sustainability, food and community spirit at the annual Olives to Oil festival on Saturday at the Civic Centre in South Morang.
The free community festival brought together residents to celebrate the local olive harvest with music, food stalls, face painting, children’s gardening activities and Compost Week celebrations.
Visitors were also encouraged to learn more about reducing food waste through the Scraps to Soil program, which shares practical tips on composting, using food and garden waste bins and growing sustainable home gardens.
The festival is part of the wider Olives to Oil initiative, which rescues olives from backyard trees and transforms them into locally produced olive oil. Each year thousands of kilograms of olives that would otherwise go to landfill are collected by residents and volunteers.
CERES worker Nase, who has been involved with the program for four years, said the initiative was created to preserve cultural traditions while reducing environmental waste.
“The idea behind this event is that a lot of people from the Mediterranean came over with olive trees, grandparents who planted them, but a lot of that knowledge with what to do with the olives has died out,” he said.
“That became a problem, as a lot ended up in landfill, and food waste in landfill creates a lot of methane gas, and that’s even worse than CO2, so this all started as a way to divert them out of landfill.”
Last year, the program helped save more than 3.1 tonnes of olives from landfill, producing about 440 litres of olive oil. Last week alone, they collected seven tonnes of olives.
Nase said the quality of the olives was important, with mouldy fruit capable of ruining an entire batch. Volunteers and residents at the event spent a lot of time going through the batches of olives to ensure the olives were good to go.
Community feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with one resident saying the oil “tasted just like my relatives’ oil in Italy”, while another described the experience as “an amazing opportunity to connect with nature and the community, giving a genuine sense of achievement and self-worth.”
Participants who secured drop-off bookings will be able to collect their freshly pressed olive oil from the CERES Preston warehouse on Sunday, July 12.
Residents who missed out on the opportunity on the day can still participate in an Olive Pickling Workshop on May 14, where they will learn how to preserve olives at home and reduce food waste.
For more information about harvesting olives visit whittlesea.vic.gov.au/Olives-to-Oil