It doesn’t have to be this hard people. You can run an event that doesn’t produce mountains of waste. You can have fun without destroying the environment. Do you like sailing in clean waters or do you want them to be filled with trash and shit?
Well guess what? You have to do something about it and its not that hard. For the 2016 Vineyard Cup we had over 1,000 Sailors walk through the tent over three days and we produced less than 4 pounds of trash.
Here’s how it broke down:
5 32 gallon tubs of recyclables – All you need are separate LABELED bins and some kids to help point the old people in the right direction.
60 Gallons of Compost -TALK to your local Farms, they want and need this to produce great food. A lot of them will even take meat and seafood scraps as it increases nitrogen in the soil.
75 Cases (24) of returnable Bottles – The money from the returnables went to the High School kids who were happy to pick it up and take it.
17 Green Team program kids – Little Kids want to get involved and are easier to train than most adults.
7 Green Team program parents – Ok someone has to make sure the kid with the boogers isn’t taking sips of the half empty beer bottles.
<4 Pounds of waste taken to the dump (mostly plastic bags that held ice cubes)nWe could have done better with this if the ice machine works
0 Paper products – Yes we used a rental company who does weddings, they gave us a deep discount to support our event…use partnerships.
0 Single serve water plastic bottles – Just ban them in your sailing instructions
100% locally sourced food (over 1,000 meals served) – Local Farms want to work with you. They would rather partner with a local organization than sell to a distributor.
87 Boats – So are you coming next year? www.vineyardcup.com
