For two days each year the University District becomes Seattle's epicenter for music, food and entertainment. Now in its 38th year, the U-District Street Fair will feature three music stages, a children's area, a beer garden, a dog show and even a new break-dancing competition.
But with more than 50,000 visitors and 335 food and craft vendors all descending on a nine-block section of University Way Northeast, there also comes plenty of garbage.
This year, however, event organizers have partnered with CleanScapes Inc., a Seattle-based company specializing in street maintenance and litter control, to drastically reduce the amount of waste produced by the annual festival.
FROM GARBAGE TO COMPOST
A new system is being implemented that will have patrons and vendors producing less garbage and more compost. In addition to all food scraps, materials that would have been trashed in years past - such as food-soiled paper products, chopsticks, skewers and waxed cardboard - can all be composted in designated receptacles.
Materials that cannot be composted in the new system are metal, plastics, Styrofoam and liquids. Items such as aluminum cans and plastic or glass bottles - though not fit for composting - can still be recycled.
For Teresa Lord Hugel, the executive director of the Greater University Chamber of Commerce and the event's primary organizer, the eco-friendly composting system is a significant step toward creating a greater environmental awareness.
"We're always trying to think of ways we can be more responsible in the bigger global community," she said. "It's hard to break past the homeostasis and think beyond the box, but once people see it can be done, then things will start to snowball."
This year's event will also feature numerous booths from organizations offering information on greener living, including Seattle Youth Garden Works and Seattle Public Utilities.
LESS INTO 'BIG, EXPENSIVE HOLE'
The Street Fair's new composting efforts will not only limit the amount of garbage produced at the event, but help to rejuvenate the surrounding environment.
The compost will make a short trip to Cedar Grove Composting in Maple Valley, where it will be turned back into products like topsoil and mulch. These products can then be reused in city flower beds and tree pots.
"It's a full cycle, rather than just dumping our waste into some big, expensive hole," said Signe Gilson, a waste-diversion manager at CleanScapes who is helping to coordinate the new greening efforts.
Last year, Seattleites disposed of 438,419 tons of trash, according to a garbage-assessment report conducted by Seattle Public Utilities. Much of that waste is transported 320 miles by train to sit in the Columbia Ridge Landfill in northern Oregon.
MORE GREENER INITIATIVES
CleanScapes began working with the U-District Chamber of Commerce in 2000 and continues to provide street maintenance throughout the area.
The company has provided garbage and recycling collection for the U-District Street Fair for the last three years, but this is the first time it will collect compost. The company will use the same system at the upcoming Fremont Fair in June.
Hugel hopes the composting method will be one of many new greening strategies to be implemented in the coming years. She is currently drafting a proposal to recy-cle restaurant grease with a biodiesel company and is also considering using biodiesel generators for future street fairs.
For Hugel, the greening initiatives represent an exciting new chapter in the long history of the U-District Street Fair. "We're just getting started with this concept. It's such a big issue, and training people to do things this way is a big shift," she said. "It's not really any more complicated; it's just a different way of thinking."
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