The Fall Festival Year

Service ware that was compostable at the festival

As many of your know, our mission is to host a festival that will help local arts and crafts thrive while we serve, support and showcase Corvallis. Staying true to that mission is part of our ongoing examination of the festival and how we can do better.

For the past few years daVinci Days Festival has led the way in green, sustainable actions at their event. Their mission as an arts, science and TECHNOLOGY event made these efforts a given. As our Board examined how being more green fit into our mission as primarily an arts event, the sustainability of the festival along with the “feel good” of Doing the Right Thing was discussed. So we took the first steps and changed to an Eco-Smart Food Court where all serving containers were either compostable or recyclable. (Much thanks and kudos to daVinci Days for having paved the way with systems we could follow.)

The overwhelming positive response we received from our attendees and volunteers for composting at the festival helped us know we made the right decision, even tho it meant additional planning and volunteers — 87 from Love, Inc., 12 OSU Recycling and the entire Boy Scout Troop #163 to be exact. We’re happy to report that “feeling good” wasn’t the only affirmative results. We were able to decrease the amount of waste to the landfill from a giant 30-yard unit to fewer than 6 yards in small bins.

Post festival it’s apparent our Eco-Smart Food Court was truly part of our festival mission as it showcased the unique community we live in — one where a local business will innovate compostable products and the local arts festivals integrate them into their events to reduce waste. Most events recycle as much as they can as well as clean up the trash, but our event actually reduced waste.

Thanks to this year’s efforts the festival has received Silver Tier Partner status with Travel Oregon’s Oregon Forever sustainable tourism businesses program. We were the first in Corvallis to achieve this status and hope it brings even more kudos to our fair city. We’ve also joined the Energize Corvallis Team to promote small changes that could add up to big energy savings in our Community. We encourage you to take the Communities Take Charge Challenge and then join us again next year knowing that we’re all doing more to use less.