Signs of Sustainability: The GrassRoots Festival grows greener

By Joey Diana Gates 

Since its beginnings back in 1991, the folks organizing the GrassRoots Festival have partnered with local volunteers to help divert as much waste as possible from neighboring landfills. This includes what has become robust compost and recycling systems that can be seen all over the festival. The waste diverted in these efforts is measured in tons. In 2016 a new partner joined the mix to work on solving the problem of disposable dishware. Since then, volunteers from Dish Truck have piloted many ways to provide reusable dishes to patrons and then collect them back up for washing, rinsing, sanitizing and repeating (in accordance with New York State health regulations.) In 2022, with help from a grant, the group began providing dishes in hospitality for not only GrassRoots, but also for Culture Camp which precedes the festival. In tracking their efforts, they found that they keep an average of approximately 14,000 pieces of garbage out of the landfill in those seven days. In the process  they have perfected a system that works. Now they are poised to further lessen their impacts.

Thanks to the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute*, GrassRoots has been awarded funding to research and expand current waste reduction efforts. Working with Dish Truck and other community partners (the festival All-Waste Team) they will expand their work to include participation from food vendors and determine the future sustainability-related infrastructure needs to further eliminate garbage, lower demands on fossil fuels, and turn waste into resources. Currently an on-demand propane system is used to heat the water for washing the dishes and the group will explore what it would take to discontinue their dependence on this fossil fuel. Through capture and measurement of the hot graywater effluents, they hope to calculate the feasibility and capacities needed for the design and construction of a heat exchange system to extract the heat from it, and/or the design of a solar hot water heating system. Further downstream, the creation of an onsite plant-based water filtration system, or managed wetland would transform the resulting nutrient rich waste into a regenerative resource. This latter system is also known as a living machine.

To this end, we will be convening a monthly project working group meeting consisting of members of the festival All-Waste Team and we would like to invite the wider community to join us to develop the mechanisms needed to carry out the project work. A kickoff meeting will be held soon (date yet tbd) followed by a monthly meeting, occurring in-person, weather permitting. Our hope and goal is to create a replicable system that can be used at festivals everywhere to reduce waste on many levels. If you are interested in joining in on the fun, please email Joey Diana Gates at solkitchen1@gmail.com.

*Funding was provided from the Environmental Protection Fund as administered by
the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
The opinions, results, findings and/or interpretations of data contained herein are
the responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions,
interpretations or policy of Rochester Institute of Technology and its NYS Pollution Prevention Institute or New York State.

Joey Diana Gates is the Founder, Head Dishwasher of Dish Truck & Regeneration & Elements in Design, whose mission is Bringing Sustainability to the Party. Signs of Sustainability is organized by Sustainable Finger Lakes.