Rebecca Prince-Ruiz OAM’s Post

Want to know how to run a successful public event that attracts, feeds and entertains over 10 thousand people without plastic waste or litter? At the recent George Street Festival Connor Warn and team set high targets to cut waste and break records with reuse company Go2cup supplying 35 food and beverage vendors with over 20,000 reusable items. Daniel Grosso and the team provided all the required reusable plates, bowls, cups, cutlery, and coffee cups to the vendors before the event started and after used were returned to designated collection sites around the event or the collection stations for later washing off site through commercial dishwashers. The Town of East Fremantle encouraged everyone to BYO water bottle and set up 3 water-stations with reusable water cups along the street to avoid single-use plastic water bottles, Dr Richard Walley OAM tried it out straight after the welcome to country. Bin stations were set up with clear signage and also monitored by friendly locals who helped people make the correct bin choice. This new best practise for waste reduction at large scale events achieved some amazing outcomes with only 146 kg of waste produced (organics, container deposit scheme beverage containers, recycling and general waste). Best of all it was great to see that it can be done and so many people enjoying the event. Thanks to the great leadership of Mayor O'Neill and council, Connor, Daniel and teams and for all the vendors for embracing this change. As our state moves to ban single-use plastic items we are keen to see more event organisers switch to reusables rather than disposables made from some other material. Photo credit - Tashi Hall #PlasticFreeJuly #ChooseToRefuse #SustainableEvents #BuildBackBetter