The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the next best time is today!…An African proverb.
The trend these days is all things green. Yes, it’s all the rage. Well, we only have one planet Earth, so why not take care of it. Why not?
Home, work, school… My nieces won’t let me get away with destroying the planet with litter. The impact of their lessons in school about the effects of litter on the environment has them in the know and ever aware of their immediate space. Now we save everything to be disposed of properly.
In 2009 while producing the Atlanta Jazz Festival, I decided I would work toward making the festival green. You see, I used to kill a lot of trees. So one day while surfing the net, I came across another festival that had won a ’green’ award and I thought to myself, ‘Self, it’s about time you produce a green festival’ … (not to mention I also wanted to compete and win another award for our outstanding festival). So this became my challenge for the 2009 festival – Going Green.
To accomplish this very new idea within the festival, we submitted an application to be considered for the Greener Festival Award. The Greener Festival Award is bestowed by A Greener Festival, LTD. A European based non-profit, they evaluate and reward music and art events and festivals around the world that make strides to adopt environmentally efficient practices at their events.
Well, as you may have guessed, we won. The Atlanta Jazz Festival was awarded the prestigious Greener Festival award in 2009. To say I was elated is putting it mildly.
So what did greening the festival mean? This is how we did it and what you can do:
1. Plan It – decide what you can or cannot do given your resources; assign one person, a staff, or a volunteer to help keep everyone on course. My go-to person was Mona Austin. OMG, she is wonderful. She embraced the project and ran with it. Considering how tedious it is to change a culture of waste, she handled our team’s grumblings with grace. That’s what you need, someone who will get it done.
2. Team Up – Partner with other organizations, your sponsors and volunteers. We partnered with a biodiesel company that picked up used cooking grease for free. Our sponsor, Coca-Cola Enterprises donated the recycle boxes for the coke cans. Our waste collection service provider put out clearly marked plastic/paper recycle boxes to collect those items as well. The following year, while we did not compete, we did partner with two organizations – the Dogwood Festival and the Green Council of Atlanta and shared signage to help cut down on the cost of creating new signage.
3. Hey That’s Not Just Garbage – Composting waste from your food vendors. Composting simply put, turns old plants and things like vegetable peelings, actual discarded food products into food and soil for new plants to grow in. Manure. All you do is have your waste management company designate specific bins to dump food in to be later used for compost. Make sure recycle bins are around the food vendor area and easily distinguishable. A great idea is to have free recycle units for capturing the frying grease for food vendors to dump their cooking oil. That way each vendor knows of an environmentally friendly way to get rid of their oil.
4. Check It Out- Post signs around the event that make patrons aware that the event is green. Hopefully this will entice them to share in the efforts of keeping it green.
5. See What I’m Driving – Consider using electric powered golf carts.
6. Share and Make the Public Aware- Check with your city’s mass transit office to see if you can provide ease of transportation to your patrons to eliminate them using their personal vehicles. Our PR campaign encouraged patrons to use public transportation – MARTA (the bus and rail system in the Atlanta, GA area). Through a partnership with MARTA, we developed a routing system that made it easy for patrons to get to and from the park and train station with ease… Collective Effort – Community and Sponsor involvement.
7. Go Green from the Start- From the beginning go green. We didn’t go green just at the park, it involved our day to day activities leading up to the outdoor event. Internally, we reduced the number of collateral pieces we printed. E-vites were created; and we used our website www.atlantafestivals.com, and our email lists to promote the festival. Our social media sites – twitter and Facebook – also played a greater role in our PR campaign.
Now I must say that some of the adjustments were challenging but only because they were new. In the end, however, our efforts paid off.
Many people think going green only means recycling your paper, glass, and plastic but there are many ways to help save our planet. A few other areas of greening your event include:
• Selecting green hotels and venues. Many hotels today make it easy for guests to contribute to saving the planet through water conservation. By requesting that towels and bed linen not be changed daily, saves on the amount of water used.
• Buy local produce. Request that your caterer use locally grown food products. This helps the planet by reducing the use of fossil fuels.
• Having a banquet at a hotel? Talk with the staff to see if they will work with you to donate leftovers to a homeless shelter.
Need Resources?
Check out the following links to help you get more green ideas:
• www.epa.gov
• www.thegreenguide.com
• www.greenlivingtips.com
• www.TheEnvironmentSite.org
With these tips, you have the green light to go green and help our planet!
Nnena U. Nchege is an event producer with over 20 years of event planning experience.
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