The Circular Food Innovation Lab (CFIL) is a project led by the City of Vancouver, the Vancouver Economic Commission (VEC), Emily Carr University of Art + Design. We are collaborating with Vancouver-based businesses and organizations working in the food system. This project takes place within the setting of a public sector innovation lab and uses systemic design, action research and design processes to work towards the transformation of Vancouver's food system. We experiment with ways to intervene on systems, structures and behaviours to prevent and reduce food waste, and create enabling conditions for circularity in and between food businesses and organizations. Read more.

How might we work together to increase circularity in Vancouver’s food system so that food is not lost or wasted; access to food is nourishing, equitable, and culturally appropriate; and habitats are protected for current and future generations of humans and more-than-humans?

Land Acknowledgment + Accountability:

The Circular Food Innovation Lab takes place on the unceded, unsurrendered, and ancestral homelands of the Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwxw̱ú7mesh Sníchim speaking people’s of the xwməθkwəyə̓m (Musqueam), Sḵwxw̱ú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil- Waututh) peoples. We acknowledge that the current food system produces many negative impacts on Indigenous foodways and also that there is much to learn from Indigenous food systems about circularity, care and well-being for all beings. We are currently dialoguing about in what ways this process can align and integrate Indigenous expertise around circularity while preventing knowledge appropriation and placing additional burden on Indigenous researchers, community members, leaders, knowledge holders and resource coordinators.