Festival waste

Eli and me are frogs in a play at Solstice

I have been going to this summer solstice festival hosted in the Shuswap area for the past three years - a four-day long event in celebration of the first day of summer.  It has been a tradition in the area for quite some time - my guess would be thirty some-odd years.

It is an amazingly orchestrated self-managed event, led by a few, but supported by many.  I was amazed the first year by how much was going on - mask making (for the candle light procession), talent show (my first year in attendance Earthbound played), cross-dress soccer game, masked candle light procession, story telling, yoga, pot-luck feast with a spit-roast lamb, treasure hunt, 30 foot long banana split, spaghetti / chili dinner, Mambo Coffee (Cafe- quality coffee shop - just have to bring a cup), Booney hotdog (if you get lucky ladies, Matt will serve you wearing nothing but an apron), and a drumming circle that subsides sometime on Sunday night.

Each person brings something to the festival and there is no money exchanged except the $20 gate fee, which is donated to helping give sight to Nepalese people.  There is so much food and drink being shared that one could show up empty handed and be fed and drunk the entire weekend (although it would be frowned upon).  My contribution to the festival for the past two years has been waste management.

Because most people that attend the event are pretty earth-friendly, one would think that it would be easy to implement a recycling program - provide recycling bins with signage and empty the bins when they become full.  I was shocked to see that the recycling program at solstice in the past was limited to cans, bottles, and a little compost.

After a so-so attempt to recycle at last year's festival, I came a little more prepared and ready to tackle the task of waste management for Solstice 2011.  Recycling in the area is easy - paper, plastic, glass and metals can all be recycled together.   Bottles and cans were already successfully being recycled at the festival, and most people were comfortable enough with the compost buckets scattered around the kitchen / dinning area.

My goal coming into the festival was to be as close to zero-waste as possible.  Knowing that people aren't as diligent about packaging waste as our family is, some garbage was going to be inevitable.

As I have been spending the last few weeks up to my elbows in garbage, I was not afraid to put on some gloves and dig into the garbage cans and pick out anything that was recyclable or compostable.  Most people were very good at reading the signs and separating recyclables and compost.  But whether it was a lack of understanding as to what could be recycled or composted, or just plain laziness (especially the recyclables that needed to be washed), I would inevitably remove a considerable amount of material from the garbage upon each inspection.

At the end of the festival Eli and I walked around the campsites with a bag and bucket to collect recyclables and compost.  I felt a bit intrusive going through people's garbage right in front of them, especially when they would tell me that they didn't have any recyclables or compost.  But each bag I sifted through would have something that could be diverted from the garbage, like tissue paper or dirty cardboard, that I could add to my compost bucket.

At the end of the four-day long festival attended by about 100 people there was 2 bags of garbage, 4 bags of recyclable material, 15 buckets of compost, and about 20 bags of bottles and cans.  Not quite zero waste but for the most part I was happy with the results.