Fresh Blog

How Green is Your Bumbershoot?

If you haven’t heard, the 2008 Bumbershoot will be the greenest yet. In fact, there’s a whole team of people here dedicated to making the Festival more sustainable.

“Sustainable?” you say?

You bet. That just means that beyond the standard “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, …then Offset” ideals, the team also makes sure that the Festival is also doing good by our local community, making Seattle a sweet place to be in the long-run. This is cool because obviously it’s good to save the Earth, so it’s here and intact for when the invaders inevitably come, as has been suggested by countless films that I’ve taken to be non-fiction, such as Independence Day.

So what does Bumbershoot do to help out the environment? Well, I’ve just learned that all of the Festival’s vendors are required to recycle, compost and even give up their used cooking grease so we can turn it into a waste-based biodiesel. Apparently last year this decreased our trash by 6 tons (which, according to Wikipedia, is the weight of an Asian elephant). To be clear, that’s like we recycled an entire Asian elephant. Awesome. We’re also powering up the Mainstage with biodiesel, meaning that your elephant ear order may or may not directly power Beck’s performance.

While the Festival is doing all sorts of cool green things (so much more than above!), there’s also some cool ways that you can green up your experience like, buying an organic cotton Festival t-shirt (comfortable and awesome looking, so you can be green in style). If you like that green fashion tip (and if there’s one thing I’m known for, it’s fashion tips), you can also pick up a custom Alchemy Goods bag – made from recycled Bumbershoot stage and Festival banners. That’s right… the banner that was on the stage for Kanye West, R.E.M. The Shins, The Pixies… is now an awesome tote. Speaking of reusing things and helpful tips: you can also save some “green” and instead of buying bottled water, plan on bringing a non-disposable water bottle to fill up for free.

In honor of Bumbershoot, I’m also trying to go green. I take the bus to and from work everyday (to be honest, that’s as much a work of environmental consciousness as it is of poverty, but still, I get credit for it) and I use my favorite ceramic E.T. mug to drink my free office coffee from (rather than disposable cups that have long since been abolished from our office). And let’s not forget my solar powered calculator. Yes, it harnesses the very power of the sun itself to help me determine how much I should tip at a restaurant.

If you want some ideas to help you green your Bumbershoot, or just wanna check out all the eco-initiatives Bumbershoot’s crack-team of sustainability experts are working on, you can visit our Green page. You’ll find loads of info, tips, contests and more.

You know, a great man once said “It ain’t easy bein’ green.” I think it was Ghandi*. Though that may be true, we here at Bumbershoot try to make it easy.

*ok, it was actually Kermit the Frog.

posted June 25 '08 at 10:01AM by Evan in green

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