If you want to find out how to make your next trade show REALLY green – or just green ideas of all sorts -- check out the Green Festival which is coming to many major cities. Hosted by Green America and Global Exchange, the multi-day festival is a plethora of all things green.
We had an up-close up and personal visit with Joe Caristo, Greening Manager at Seven- Star, Inc., the event production company for the Green Festivals. Joe is responsible for landfill diversion for Seven-Star’s events, and sets up their Resource Recovery Stations. At last year’s Green Festival in DC, Joe and his Green Team managed to divert an amazing 94% of waste from the landfill. Their goal for this year: 98%. How did they plan to accomplish this? First of all, they trained their Green Team (a total crew of about 200 who work different shifts throughout DC’s 2-day festival in exchange for a free pass).
Team members alternated working at the Resource Recovery Stations (pictured above) on the trade show floor and out at the loading dock where they re-sorted through ALL bags to ensure that no waste was placed in the wrong container. Specifically, one or two Green Team members were assigned to a Resource Recovery Station where they were VERY proactive about ensuring that all waste disposed at their station was placed in the appropriate container: recycling, compost, landfill or liquids. This can be a tricky job since an item may appear to be recyclable, but is really compostable, and vice versa. If anything was questionable, it was placed in the landfill bin.
Jennifer Beidel oversaw the crew at the loading dock who ensured that the contents of each bag were not contaminated with items that should be in another bag.
For example, they sorted through the compostable bag to ensure that only compostable products – food, plates and other disposables – were inside the bag. If there are too many contaminants, the compost company may not accept the waste or, as Joe calls it, the resources. Once a bag has been checked over, it is weighed so that Joe and his team can track how much of the resources they diverted from the landfill. In the past, Joe has used the large scales that are available at convention centers, but when in a pinch, he has used a simple bathroom scale. That was refreshing for us to hear because it made us realize that ANYBODY can set up a resource recovery station just like they do at the Green Festival.
