Green Team Volunteers Strive For Zero Waste at Festival

The 2015 Greenbelt Labor Day Festival will be the greenest one yet as it evolves into a zero waste event. Reduce, Reuse, Recyle or Compost is the message. As part of the efforts a new program will be introduced: Greenbelt Water Works. Greenbelt Water Works will identify locations around center city which will offer water bottle refills free of charge. Everyone is encouraged to bring a reusable water bottle and fill up at Greenbelt Water Works locations. Signs will be placed indicating which locations around the Roosevelt Center and which public buildings will participate in Greenbelt Water Works. The motive behind Greenbelt Water Works is that fewer single-use plastic water bottles is one way to reduce waste. Be sure to check in with the Green Team / Greenbelt ACES booth so a tally can record how many community members remember to bring a reusable water bottle. A map showing the Greenbelt Water Works locations and water fountains will be at the booth as well.

Please help the 2015 Greenbelt Labor Day Festival be the greenest one yet as we strive toward becoming a zero waste event. We hope everyone will be involved in this effort, from recycling, composting, learning through fun games, reusing your water bottle or drinking from available fountains, or volunteering to help us. For students or any other volunteer we will be glad to sign community service hours and/or provide a recommendation as appropriate.

Volunteer Opportunities

The Green Team / Greenbelt ACES booth will rely on volunteers to lead fun educational children’s games and a scavenger hunt of Greenbelt Water Works locations. Another volunteer opportunity will be to educate community members how to identify recyclables from landfill trash and to choose the right bin for each. We expect mainly students as volunteers but we also need adults to provide light supervision.

In the spirit of zero waste, the same signs from the Green Man Festival will be reused to label trash bins as recycling, compost, or landfill in order to increase visibility and distinction. Throughout the Labor Day Festival, volunteers will monitor the bins for contamination and promote zero waste event efforts. The goals are to 1) educate community members how to Recycle in Prince George’s County and 2) divert as much waste as possible from landfills to recycling and composting facilities.

Instead of being thrown away to the landfill, leftover food scraps will be collected from vendors and delivered to the MOM’s of College Park BiobiN. The compost materials will be added later to Prince George’s County compost pilot program. Ultimately, less methane gas will be emitted from a landfill, and high quality compost will be produced for the earth.

To Volunteer

If you are interested in serving as a zero waste volunteer, it is highly encouraged that you attend one of the trainings on August 20 or September 1 from 7 - 8:30 pm at the Department of Public Works, 555 Crescent Road, Greenbelt, MD 20770. Volunteers will learn about the changes in recycling, how to teach others which items are accepted as recyclables from sustainability experts in Prince George’s County, and are encouraged to entertain festival goers while educating.

Interested? Please RSVP here to confirm your availability.

If you would like to learn more about serving as a zero waste volunteer, please contact Luisa Robles, Greenbelt’s Sustainability Coordinator, at lrobles@greenbeltmd.gov or John and Jane, Green ACES, at jrmlippert@aol.com or (301) 507-6765.

Recycling Tips

If your waste is recyclable—and most will be—please discard it into a recycling bin, not the trash can. This year, food vendors will provide mostly recyclable dinnerware. Look for the chart on the recycling bins showing in green the items to recycle, and in red the few you can’t. Also, please put only recyclables in the recycling bins.

Want to have your taxes used for something other than trash? If we spend less money on trash collection, the city can use those savings for other programs and activities. Greenbelt is charged $56 per ton brought to landfill, and we actually get money back from our recyclables. Volunteers will be available for questions.

Greenbelt is a leader in sustainability. One great way to educate our friends and neighbors, and encourage the practice of recycling, is to raise awareness during the Labor Day Festival. The Labor Day Zero Waste effort is a project of the Zero Waste Circle which is comprised of members of Greenbelt’s Green Team and affinity groups with support from the Greenbelt Department of Public Works and the Chesapeake Education Arts and Research Society (CHEARS).