Our chapter of Clean Up - Give Back (CUGB) partnered with the Southeast Oak Park Community Organization and Takeout 25 to manage sustainability at the 20th annual BarrieFest!
As soon as we were set up, we had three BarrieFest organizers, separately, come up to us and thank us greatly for being there because at BarrieFest 2022 there was no one managing the festival’s waste which left the park full of litter. :(
Malcolm, Jackie, Sela, Willa, and I recruited nearly 40 volunteers, mostly from OPRF Environmental Science classes and OPRF Enviro Club, to cover shifts throughout our 7-hour-long day! Each hour, we had 2-3 volunteers walking around the festival, picking up any trash they could find, as well as 4 volunteers managing our two waste stations. Even though we were there to help sort the compost, recycling, and landfill,
I was surprised at how invested each festival goer was in making sure that their own waste went into the right bins. They took time to ask questions about what can go in each bin and many asked us what CUGB is all about!
Not only did we make connections with individual community members, but we were able to meet the owners of the 8 local restaurants with stands at the festival and help them properly dispose of their waste such as cardboard boxes, aluminum trays, and plastic wrappers after it was over.
With everyone’s help (and my skillfulness with the scale), we collected 194 pounds of waste, two-thirds of which were compost and recycling that was diverted from the landfill! It's very fulfilling to know that the 60 pounds of compost that we collected throughout the day would have created approximately 500 pounds of methane gas in the landfill if we were not there to separate it. Methane gas has 86 times more heat trapping ability in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide which makes diverting food waste even more important!
I personally don’t usually like spending 6 hours on my feet in the beating sun, but this time, it was different. We were constantly getting thanked for all of our hard work, and seeing how happy everyone was that young people were out there caring for the planet and our community made it all worth it!