Zero Waste Festivals …….. Transition Streets 6.6
Festivals, food fairs, and large public events can be murder on waste. Plastic food containers, drink containers, zip-ties, packaging, and souvenirs generally end up in landfill. A typical music festival of 16,000 people can create 8 tonnes of waste.
Community Groups, Land Care & Environmental groups, and many event organisers are working to reduce this waste. One Melbourne based company is supporting this by providing food vendors with re-washable, recyclable plates, mugs, cups, and drink containers – supported by a wash station (and many volunteers) so that all food scraps are composted, and no single use plastic is needed. In the case above, this reduced the total waste load to 800 kgs (with only 330 kgs going to landfill).
The full report on the 2019 Celtic Festival Waste Management
Tom Danby, Moonee Valley Sustainability, 2020