The Spring 2010 Hoboken Arts & Music Festival was the first big festival in town to have a successful recycling program! The QLC’s Committee for a Green Hoboken was behind this recycling success. Forty-four bags of uncontaminated recyclable plastic, glass, and aluminum were collected by the Department of Environmental Service at the festival this past Sunday.
Recycling at this festival was a huge improvement over the attempt to recycle at the fall 2009 festival. At that event, all of the recyclables collected had too many contaminants to bring to the recycler. Sadly, it all went into the trash. Learning from these past mistakes, Jason Tecza (pictured) and JD Capuano came up with a new plan to get festival-goers to recycle and reached out for help to make it happen.
Our success is attributable to collaboration with the City of Hoboken – both Environmental Services and Cultural Affairs, help from Greener Corners, cooperation from the food vendors, and volunteers! The city was very excited about doing this and was a good partner in getting the special bins set up and in collecting the materials. Check out the administration’s excitement on the City’s website. Greener Corners is looking to bring recycling to the streets of Hoboken everyday and one of their co-founders, Aaron Klein, brought us special temporary recycling bins with clear bags just for the festival.
What really helped make this happen was volunteers wearing bright green shirts displaying “Hoboken Recycles” on the front walking around monitoring the recycling containers for contaminants. They adorned latex gloves and picked out plastics that aren’t yet recycled in Hoboken (with a 5 or 6 stamped on them) and any trash that mixed in. The volunteers also picked recyclables out of the garbage. Aaron helped with this effort. The volunteers were happy to see festival-goers largely putting items in the right receptacles – recycling vs. landfill waste.
One other ingredient added to the success. We would like to thank the food vendors who almost unanimously allowed us to tape signs instructing festival-goers to recycle on their booths.
Look for more great things we’re pushing to improve recycling in Hoboken!