Greening the LeMoyne Chain of Parks Art Festival, April 16-17, 2016

A big milestone for advancing sustainability in our community was launched when Kelly Dozier, director of the annual LeMoyne Chain of Parks Art Festival, asked for Sustainable Tallahassee's partnership to implement and coordinate a process to "green" this year's festival. 

The team we assembled, under the leadership of Sustainable Tallahassee's Executive Director Jim Davis, spent several months working out the details and setting up several components that will result in a guide for greening future festivals in our community.  

"Greening" a two-day festival of around 50,000 attendees, with food and entertainment, is a huge undertaking and will be an evolving process. We're excited about this beginning and about what this direction represents for our community.

We provided educational and interactive exhibits to reinforce the message that "reduce" and "reuse" come before "recycle".  Our activities included:

• Promoted the reduced use of single-use plastic water bottles:  Our Kick the Bottled Water committee set up a table display and created a Bottled Water Monster that circulated throughout the festival grounds.  The purpose was to provide facts about the negative health, cost, and environmental impact of plastic water bottles. 
  
  
• Promoted the reduced use of single-use plastic bags:  The Rags2 Bags team gave away nearly 600 reusable shopping bags which volunteers had sewn over the past several months. The bags were made from donated fabric, using donated sewing machines and volunteer time. The "bag ladies" give their time to encourage everyone to use reusable bags instead of single use plastic bags.  
  
  
• Provided volunteers stationed at trash/recycling containers throughout the festival to help the public understand the correct use of the containers.  We are indebted to Leon County's Office of Sustainability for providing training for our "Recycle Patrol" volunteers.

Green Party Events:  

We are indebted to Jodi Wilkof and Lerena Fleck of Green Party Events  who participated in our planning functions and donated their time and services to the “Behind the Scenes” and “VIP” participant areas:

• Donated compostable and real tableware so that no single-use disposables were sent to the landfill.
  
  
• Collected, properly disposed, and diverted from the landfill 363 pounds of waste consisting of:
            143 pounds of compost
            220 pounds of recycling                 

City of Tallahassee: 

Paul Hurst, Recycle Coordinator with the City of Tallahassee, was a valuable participant in our planning sessions.  The City made significant contributions to this greening event:

• Gave free reusable water bottles to festival goers.
  
  
• Provided free drinking water for bottle refills so festival goers could have an alternative to commercially bottled water. 
  
  
• Provided garbage barrels and recycle receptacles throughout the festival.
  
  
• Provided compost collection barrels for the food waste generated by the food trucks.