Published on Wednesday, 23 March 2022 at 12:40:08 PM
Last December, the East Fremantle George Street Festival entertained over 10,000 people and the Town not only set a new path for best practice for sustainable large-scale events, it set new records in relation to waste minimisation.
This event attracted, fed, and entertained without the need for plastic waste or litter!
After these remarkable achievements, the Town submitted an application for a WasteSorted Award and has since been shortlisted for a 2022 Waste Avoidance (Events) Award.
The Town’s strict Sustainable Events Policy was the foundation of the success of waste minimisation at the festival, ensuring the provision of the three-bin FOGO system, restricted use of all single-use plastics from all areas of the festival; instead opting for reusable alternatives. The Town also provided three water tankers to prevent the need for single use water bottles with over 1,500 cups at each and had the amazing assistance of "bin monitors" from the Hurricanes Paddling Group who monitored the bins throughout the event. Thank you to the Hurricanes Paddling Group.
View Sustainable Event Policy Here
By partnering with Go2Cup, the Town provided over 35 food and beverage providers with over 20,000 reusable items to replace the need for any single-use or compostable packaging. Through this method of avoidance, the Town was able to limit as much waste as possible with only 48kg of waste sent to landfill for the WHOLE EVENT!
To learn more about GO2CUP
Above - GO2CUP the process utilised at the East Fremantle George Street Festival.
Due to the various methods put in place, only 146kg of waste was produced, with only a 3.3% contamination rate for the whole event!
- 41kg of recycling (including 14kg of 270 eligible beverage containers sent to the Fremantle Containers for Change Facility)
- 62kg of food organics, garden organics (FOGO) waste
- 48kg of general waste (including 5kg of contamination)
The FOGO bins saw the least amount of contamination with a mere 0.3% or 200g from the total 62kg. The contamination was largely from bioPak products such as PLA cold drinks cups and coffee cups.
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The recycling stream has the highest rate of contamination with 4.8kg or 11%. The contamination comprised of compostable coffee cups and compostable PLA drinking cups.
Across the whole event, only 54 water bottles ended up in the bins at the conclusion of the event!
The Town aims to use the George Street Festival as a case study for other local governments and event organisers to demonstrate how reusables and the FOGO system can be used successfully to eliminate unnecessary event waste.
The success at the George Street Festival has been shared not only by WALGA, the Resource Recovery Group, but also Rebecca Prince-Ruiz and Plastic Free July to thousands of people across the world. The Town has since been approached by many other local governments interested in replicating the process, as well as being requested to provide a presentation at the 2022 Environmental Health Association Annual Conference, a presentation to the Southwest Group, the WA Waste Educators Network, and a community presentation at the East Fremantle Glyde-Inn.
For more information on the WasteSorted Awards Finalists
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