Simeon Brody
In my late teens and early 20's I was a regular 'paying punter' at Glastonbury Festival. Then I discovered how I could get in for free! I joined the 'Green Litter Picker Crew' and helped keep the site clean and sort recyclables from rubbish, then I worked with Network Recycling specifically on the recyclables. Although I haven't been to Glasto for years, I've been a volunteer at greener festivals ever since. I've just come back from the Big Green Gathering which is held on an organic farm in the Mendip Hills near Cheddar Gorge. For nearly a decade I've been a composter at the BGG, recycling large volumes of catering waste from the cafes using waste wood, lopped hedging and twigs, cardboard and straw, layered with tens of kilos of fruit and veg peelings and the unsold cooked food which can't be kept beyond the day it's made as there's rarely any refrigeration on site.
At the 2005 BGG I constructed a large compost heap on top of a plastic sheet to allow the juices to drain off into a 1000 litre container for disposal rather than flow into the caves below. We estimated that the heap was about 7 tonnes, and it included all the cardboard plates and cups, leaf plates and wooden cutlery which the organisers stipulated were the only materials allowed to be used in the cafes. I visited the pile a few months later and it had composted down really well, apart from the coconuts which seem to be pretty indestructable. I did the same last year, an even bigger pile, carefully constructed to allow air into the middle of the pile and liquids to be collected, over 2500 litres. An excellent, local and low-impact way of recycling the putrescible wastes, even though the resultant compost isn't used for anything other than growing a big patch of nettles, good for the wildlife.
However this year, because of the new 'Animal By-Products Regulations' we were not allowed to compost on site, so we had to take the catering wastes to a professional composter who is ABPR licenced if we wanted to recycle them. So we filled a couple of skips and had them driven the 69 miles to 'Eco-Composting' (Eco Sustainable Ltd, based in Christchurch, Dorset) where they were mixed with shredded wood and waste meat pies, put in a 'clamp' with forced aeration, held at 70 degrees celcius for at least an hour, steamed to cook the edges of the pile and left to mature for several weeks. After screening for plastics, the compost is used to grow turf, which ends up in gardens all over the south of the country. Good recycling!
The Big Green Gathering has loads of entertainments and educational things going on, it's a brilliant festival and I love being a small part of it. I was very pleased to again meet Brigit Strawbridge, from the BBC TV programme 'It's Not Easy Being Green'. Following this media attention, she's launched an educational charity called 'The Big Green Idea' which aims to raise awareness about sustainable lifestyle choices, energy efficient and low impact products and the like.
My 'Green Tip of the Week' is to visit www.itsnoteasybeinggreen.org and glean and take on a few ideas from there. I'll be referring to the BGG in future blogs as there was so much information available which I want to share. Maybe I'll meet one of my CC blog-readers there in 2008!
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