Greetings from Amtrakland! I’m on the train again, heading back north to Chico after spending the past three days at the Green Festival. I must say, I’ve been rather impressed with what I’ve seen this weekend. In the previous posting, I addressed some concerns about businesses jumping on the “green bandwagon” mainly to make a quick buck. There’s quite a few business out there in the market doing this—just turn on your television or look at magazine ads and you’ll start spotting “greenwashing” occurring all over the place. But luckily at the Green Festival, the two non-profits that sponsored it—Global Exchange and Co-op America—were very selective about who they allowed to exhibit. One requirement was that a business had to be directly involved in helping social causes in the community or the global market. The festival only picked businesses that were more concerned about helping with the greater good, and less concerned about making a profit. It was quite refreshing to hear this in a world that seems constantly driven by the almighty (yet shrinking) dollar.
Another positive thing to see at this festival was that it attracted a wide variety of people. On Friday, I had a bad knee-jerk reaction to what I observed, because the crowd was mainly composed of young urban professionals. But on Saturday and Sunday, the place was teeming with a lot of students and neo-hippies, almost as if a Dead concert just let out. Looking out over the crowd of attendees all dressed in browns, greens and earthy tones, it seemed rather soothing. I rather enjoyed being surrounded by all these woodsy, happy individuals, because it made me feel as if I was on a large camping trip with all of them. Everyone had their own unique style of dress, and you could tell they didn’t care what other people thought. But by dressing in their own “unique” style, they all appeared to look alike, like they had all been given the same memo to wear loose pants, T-shirts with messages, and no flashy jewelry or makeup. Welcome to the era of the non-conforming comformists.
One of the wonderful things about attending this exhibition was that I didn’t have to worry about buying any meals. Sure, they had an entire section filled with vendors selling foodstuffs like vegetarian corn dogs, organic salads, and tofu everything. But if you played your cards right, you could totally live off all of the samples that they handed out for free all weekend long. About 20 vendors were handing out samples of their special coffees, teas and soft drinks in tiny little cups, and most were located along the same central aisle. So, by the time you finished one sample, you’d already be at the next booth picking up another one, and by the time you were finished, you had consumed a 16 oz. drink of everything. The same went for food samples. From crackers to cookies to organic cheese and yogurts to raisins and apples and bananas, it was enough to keep your stomach satisfied.
My biggest vice, however, was the Clif Bar booth. Strategically located at the front of the exhibition, it always had about 10 different samples of energy bars just sitting there, ready to nab. And each one tasted so good (especially the Chocolate Mint Chip). Like a NASCAR driver, I probably swung by that booth about 8 times this weekend, gorging myself of Clif Bar samples. I’ve probably got enough fiber stored up in my system now to keep me regular until after Christmas. A close second on the vice list was the Organic Valley booth with its combination milk-and-orange-juice drinks and its organic cheeses. It was like eating candy that came straight from a cow. If I had a year's supply of Clif Bars and Organic Valley beverages, I’d be in green heaven.
The dark, evil part about eating all these samples, however, was the amount of trash generated at the festival. Just to give you an idea of what was going on, here’s a picture of just one day’s worth of trash (not including banana peels and apple cores) that I generated at this event:
Yes, this isn’t good, especially considering that this is a “green” festival. However, the planners for this event were already thinking way ahead on this and had volunteers every hundred feet or so manning recycling containers for people's trash. Most of the sample cups were made from recyclable plastic or paper. At last year’s festival, they had a diversion rate of 96% on all their trash, which is pretty commendable considering the amount of garbage that most conventions produce. However, in regards to all the trash produced from take-away items (pamphlets, magazines, promotional items)... well, that’s another story.
Looks like the Amtrak bus I'm now riding on is about to pull into Chico, so I better wrap this up. Over the next few days, I’ll mention some of the other notable things I saw or learned about at the Green Festival so you, too, can start "awakening the hippie within." But please remember to take a bath... I beg of you.
No comments:
Post a Comment