Green Faires?

[Charlotte Rowan]

Yesterday I worked my first day as an ale tender at MNRF. We are a bottle pub, and I was astonished to learn that all those bottles, already nicely separated out from the regular trash, do not get recycled but end up in landfills with the regular trash!!

I have also frequently lamented the lack of recycling bins at the Festival. All those plastic cups, at least, could be recycled. A lot of the trash could probably be composted. The food vendors could probably use paper plates instead of the plastic and styrofoam they currently use.

Are there any faires out there that are a bit more green than this?

[WindChime]

the Kentucky Highland Renassaince Fest has containers around the site marked for bottles an cans. they also use more paper plates then styrofoam items.

[Lady L]

Wow, especially when MNRF is having a "healthy living" green weekend!

[Escarlata]

I've got a bit of knowledge here, I was planning to do an article about green Faires but was never able to make a contact at one of the events.

The Moscow Renaissance Faire in Moscow, Idaho, is a green faire. They use require their food vendors to get all cutlery and serving ware from the event promoters who buy mass quantities of biodegradables.

The Spoutswood Faerie Festival is green also. There were several newspaper articles about their collection and recycling processes.

From what Andy Boyd in Idaho told me, it's doable and can break even once you get all the processes in place. However, the manpower requirements are intense. Any cross contamination in the bins increase manpower and can make the whole bin unusable, depending on what went wrong (turkey legs in the aluminum cans for instance). To get around that, they station a volunteer at each collection bin to help and teach about recycling.

[analise]

Yep, at Spoutwood they even have handy dandy signs with examples of what kind of refuse goes in which bin.

Of course, I also noted that they had volunteers who still had to move stuff to the right place, I'm sure most people just see "oh, a bin" and toss everything in their.

The neatest thing I thought was that at least one of the drink vendors had cups made from corn or something but looked and felt like plastic, but they were biodegradable!

Anyway, Spoutwood is a really good example of a festival that does a very good job at minimizing waste that goes to the landfill.

[Dinobabe]

Many people don't know this but highly sensitive electronics are often packed in biodegradable "styrofoam" peanuts.  They are made from cornstarch and are edible (though they don't taste very good )!  You can literally wash them down the drain.  I wish all styrofoam was made this way.

It amazes me sometimes the lack of biodegradable/reusable products or recycling when it can be SOOOO easy.

[Charlotte Rowan]

Wow, especially when MNRF is having a "healthy living" green weekend!

Good point. I didn't even think about that!

I can imagine it is not easy to make a faire green. And I suppose it's not on the top of Jim Peterson's list.  But you'd think somehow we could manage to recycle bottles that are *already* separated. Well, glad to hear some other faires are doing it, anyway...

[Muffin]

Yesterday I worked my first day as an ale tender at MNRF. We are a bottle pub, and I was astonished to learn that all those bottles, already nicely separated out from the regular trash, do not get recycled but end up in landfills with the regular trash!!

I have also frequently lamented the lack of recycling bins at the Festival. All those plastic cups, at least, could be recycled. A lot of the trash could probably be composted. The food vendors could probably use paper plates instead of the plastic and styrofoam they currently use.

Are there any faires out there that are a bit more green than this?

We have a recycling bin behing Foaming.. ? Mystery beer cans and soda cans get thrown in there.. You or your pubmaster might want to check with Mandy and see if there is anything available.. It could also be a problem of not being able to rinse those plastic cups and glass bottles out, etc..

[Charlotte Rowan]

Hmm, I'll have to check into that. Maybe it is because we can't rinse them out. Or I guess it's possible that the person who told me they get trashed could have been misinformed. Will have to investigate more this weekend...

[DragonWing]

I love SproutWood. My family live around there. 

[Charlotte Rowan]

It's like someone read this thread and felt ashamed. Suddenly there are recycling bins on the grounds for patron use, for plastic bottles and such!! Nice! I still don't know about the beer bottles but at least it's a start!

[Sir Ironhead]

Many people don't know this but highly sensitive electronics are often packed in biodegradable "styrofoam" peanuts.  They are made from cornstarch and are edible (though they don't taste very good )!  You can literally wash them down the drain.  I wish all styrofoam was made this way.

It amazes me sometimes the lack of biodegradable/reusable products or recycling when it can be SOOOO easy.

That sounds like something my mom did once.  She sent me a box when I was in Iraq and used old popcorn as the packing material.

[groomporter]

We have a recycling bin behing Foaming.. ? Mystery beer cans and soda cans get thrown in there.. You or your pubmaster might want to check with Mandy and see if there is anything available.. It could also be a problem of not being able to rinse those plastic cups and glass bottles out, etc..

Yeah I've noticed red and white? bins in from of some food booths this year, but didn't notice if they were recycling or just dealing with some trash specific to that booth.

[jcbanner]

I've often wanted recycling at my faire, and others have too. but I'm afraid it would have to be each person/ booth on their own handling the recycling. As the Site Coordinator at my home faire, one of my responsibilities is to oversee trash pickup, every weekend, I tell the trash crews, and the merchants to fill up the first dumpster before starting on the second. (I'll tell the crews as they drive towards them which one to use) and as soon as I turn my back to check on another activity, people are tossing trash into both dumpsters at once.

If the trash crews and merchants can't even manage to leave one dumpster empty until the first is full, then there's little hope for them keeping the trash and recycling sorted as they do trash pickup.

recycling at faire is a great idea, but I believe in most cases it's going to have to be at the personal level policing your own trash