Earth Day Food & Wine Festival

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to help at a fun, exciting event: Earth Day Food and Wine Festival.  This annual event is coordinated by the Central Coast Vineyard Team and was held at Pomar Junction in Templeton in connection with Earth Day.  Though this type of event isn’t usually my cup of tea, we were asked to participate on behalf of Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow (ACT).  Not only have I never taken much, well let’s not lie now, any consideration of Earth Day, but I have never put much thought into recycling and composting, with the exception of having a recycling bin in our apartment.  My participation in this event certainly took me out of my comfort zone, and not just because it was close to 90 degrees outside.  As ACT members, we were asked to participate in the event as recycle monitors; or as our supervisor for the day, Ian, so fittingly called us, the “communicators of recycling.”  Basically, our job for the 6 hour event was to stand at the recycling stations, which consisted of a recycle bin and green waste bin, and help the slightly event attendees put their trash in the right container.  And let me tell you, there was more to it than I was expecting.

We started the day by getting a tour of the event and locating the nine recycling stations.  We then got the scoop on what things at the event would constitute being recycled and what could be composted.  Though my fellow “communicators of recycling” were initially having a hard time remembering what was compostable, we finally figured out that if it was ever alive, then it could be composted.  We thought we had it all figured out and that our day wouldn’t be too eventful, until we were told of the Boy Scouts who did this particular job last year and supposedly did an outstanding job (remember though, they probably got a badge for this).  We were reminded that those boys did a great job, and specifically, that they weren’t scared to dig through the trash to the bottom of the bin if a plastic spoon ended up in the green waste container.  Well, that’s when things got interesting.  We quickly realized that this day was going to entail more than just standing behind the bins and directing people as to which bin to throw their trash into.  This day was going to entail us physically getting into the bins to remove things such as a little plastic spoon that if otherwise not removed, would deem an entire can of compostable products as not compostable.  Needless to say, we all experienced our share of sticking our hands, and many times heads, into the bins to remove a plastic spoon or cup. 

Check out ACT President, Jennifer Ray, getting her hands dirty in the compost bin.  In an effort to live up to the expectations the Boy Scouts left for us, we were removing a paper towel that indeed, come to find out after the fact, was compostable.  Oh well, at least we learned!

Despite all the time we spent rummaging through the compost bins and the hot weather (which of course was made worse by the fact that we had to wear black t-shirts), we actually had a decent time and I can say that I learned a lot about recycling and composting and have a new found respect for those involved in such endeavors.  Oh, and how can I forget all the slightly awkward, yet entertaining moments involving myself and monitoring intoxicated folks as they attempted to discard their garbage into the correct bins (key word there: intoxicated)?  But we’ll leave those stories for another time…