"How Berkeley Can You Be!?" 2007 - Aiming for Zero Waste

In our wonderful Berkeley with its visionary commitment to zero waste, it takes all of us doing our part.  The festival greening is sponsored by The City of Berkeley in partnership with The Ecology Center to reduce waste, show off the city’s expanded home composting program, to maximize recycling and make soil through composting. We need your help! We’ll report back how we did after the event!

Step-by-Step Green Guide – How Everyone Participates:

Packing for the Fair:  Pack your canvas shopping bag with your reusable to-go ware (plate, utensils, mug), cloth napkin and your own reusable, refillable water bottle. The food vendors are happy to serve into your own dish.

There are four FREE water refill stations, while we move away from one-time use water bottles and onto more sustainable reuse approaches.

Getting to How Berkeley: Come in your Art Car, carpool, take public transportation, or ride your bike! The Parade route and Festival site are only one block from Downtown Berkeley BART!

What you really need to know when you get to the Event:

We are aiming for a 95% waste diversion rate. Don’t bring stuff here that isn’t recyclable or compostable.

All food vendor supplies are BIODEGRADABLE. The utensils are made of potato and the cups are made of cornstarch. Compost it ALL!

Zero Waste Zones with Clear Stream containers -  There are 10 Stations at which you do your eco-self-sorting. The bags are clear, you can see what has gone before you and follow suit. Know what you have and dispose of it properly.

Compost in the Green Cans: Again, all the food vendor supplies are biodegradable and go in these green-lidded cans, plus ALL food scraps and all paper.

Recycle in the Blue Cans: Just plastic bottles, aluminum cans and cardboard.  If you brought glass, drop it gently so it doesn’t break please.

Garbage in the black bags: Some “conventional” plastics, like stuff you brought in from the outside, plastic coffee cup lids from the outside, plastic bottle caps, mylar wrappers, some chip bags, soy milk cartons. If you can’t compost it, recycle it or reuse it, don’t buy it. That’s how zero waste happens here and everywhere.

Restrooms: Whenever possible and sanitary, let your hands air dry, use your shirt, pants, someone else’s hair, but try not to use trees to dry your hands. We ARE composting all paper towels from the handwash stations, so don’t drop your trash or recyclables in those green cans!

To calculate your impact on the planet and just what share of the earth’s resources you use, visit www.myfootprint.org.

Rethink, Restore, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – that’s the order we go in here.

-Green Mary (www.greenmary.com)

Objective: Zero Waste Events