Day 12 of Gratefulness: Denver Event Greening Initiative

I am going on my 4^th year of supporting the People Fair’s with their greening efforts.  Do you ever think how much waste these large festivals collect?  The People’s Fair roughly collects over 17 tons of waste during their 2-day festivals that serves roughly 250,000 fair-goers.  That is like the size of three elephants.  Over the last 3 years we have been able to move some of that waste away from the landfills and into recycling.  It has been a huge learning project for me as this is not my expertise.  These festivals want to be doing something but often do not have the funding or staff resources to do much. 

In 2011 I am proud to say we reached 24% diverted from the landfills at the People’s Fair, we also provide education to our fair-goers, vendors and our green volunteers.  We started this process slowly with back of the house recycling, then moved to minimal front of the house recycling system and added more extensive front of the house system to reach our current 24%.  We have only focused on recycling and not compost or reducing our waste.  But this year that might all change. 

These festivals want to do their part and know there is an added value to being green.  There is a financial investment and a staff investment in order to create a greener event.  So many of these festivals are produced by nonprofits that have very little money to work with. Many of these festivals are also fundraiser to support the mission of the nonprofit. As most of my friends know I have been passionate about this project from the time I started with the People’s Fair and I was excited last fall when Whole Foods wanted to jump on board to see if we could support more festivals. 

As this project has unfolded it has been absolutely beautiful watch and participate in.  So many people are interested in supporting it and making it successful.  This is a real community initiative to support our local festivals which supports our community- it honestly comes around full circle and I think it is amazing to see it in action.  The festivals that we have initially chosen for this project are equally excited in making it successful.  They are invested in the project and actively participate in designing of it as well as the implementing of it.  I believe that you need 100% of their involvement throughout the entire process to honestly make it work.  We have it!!!    I am thrilled and grateful for their support in taking a lead with us on changing how we do greening at these events.  This is truly a community collaboration at its finest!