volunteer at the Chicago Green Festival

There were four dumpsters that everything had to be sorted into: landfill, recycling paper, recycling non-paper, and compost. Our goal was to keep the landfill dumpster to a minimum. (I believe at the San Fran green festival they diverted 96% of the festival waste from the landfill.) There was some recycling thrown in there already, so me and a couple others hopped right in and got out as much as we could. Not bad. Except it was really huge and I had to get some help climbing back out!

I spent the next four hours going through every bag of trash that came out out to the dock, doing quality control on the sorting job happening inside at each trash station. Oh man! with all those signs and people stationed at each bin, you’d think that a heap of styrofoam packing peanuts wouldn’t wind up in a compost bag… super-yuck! We had big yellow gloves, too. Someone mentioned a tv show about dirty jobs, and we chuckled.

It felt really good to be doing what I though was the most concrete contribution for keeping the festival green.

but I have soooo many stories to tell before I cross it off the list. I should definitely you about the great speeches by Jim Hightower, Dennis Kucinich and John Perkins.

From climbing in a dumpster Saturday morning to a goodnight kiss Sunday night, and everyone and everything in between… What a wonderful weekend!!

is the Chicago Green Festival! It goes from 10am-8pm Saturday, and 11am-6pm on Sunday at McCormick Place.

If you ride your bike, you get half price admission! Happily, I will get in free for volunteering to sort recycling from trash. I heart manual labor. I do too much brain work at my day job and looooove to get dirty and use my body. Maybe I will go back home and be a farmer eventually. Of a CSA! What a wonderful dream.

At any rate, check out the Green Festival website and consider coming out to learn how you can green up your everyday life.

For example:
More than 20 million Hershey’s Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of tinfoil. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.

Little things add up, I promise!

Have already signed up. :)