Youth and the Future of Sustainability: Resource Recovery on the Festival

How a lot rubbish did you produce immediately?

Every day, 1.3 billion plastic water bottles are used all over the world. That’s only one instance of single-use plastic—it doesn’t embody all of the sweet wrappers, fast-food packaging, purchasing baggage, and occasional stirrers that most individuals encounter in their every day lives. Every day, we produce extra waste. That additionally signifies that each day, environmentally sustainable practices grow to be extra related.

Sustainable practices have lengthy been essential on the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, however this 12 months’s theme notably highlights their urgency.

At this Folklife Festival, the wants of younger individuals are entrance and middle. The theme, Youth and the Future of Culture, facilities on the experiences and objectives of younger individuals. For most younger individuals, these experiences embody environmental sustainability issues, and the long run can typically look grim.

Sustainability practices and their significance to youth are a major focus of Kate Haas, the Festival’s sustainability coordinator. She and sustainability assistant Jessie Tabella work to make sure that the Festival is as environmentally sustainable as doable. They will not be alone in doing the work, although.

“We have a really big volunteer program,” Haas says. “Last year we had over fifty volunteers. They range, really, from ages twelve to eighty, but I would say the biggest portion of our volunteers are in high school. It’s definitely a very youth-involved program.”

The Festival’s volunteer involvement displays broader developments of curiosity in sustainability. Across the United States and all over the world, younger individuals are afraid for his or her surroundings. Studies present that environm ental issues can place a heavy psychological burden on younger individuals, particularly once they expertise local weather occasions like flooding, however taking motion to guard the surroundings can typically assist alleviate these anxieties.

The involvement of youth in environmental sustainability efforts is critical. Their ardour for the difficulty is evident even in native settings, just like the Folklife Festival. Volunteers are a necessary a part of the sustainability program, and with out them, the Festival wouldn’t have the ability to obtain the success it has had with sustainable efforts.

The Festival has included sustainable practices for a few years. A brand new sustainability function was launched in 2011: stations for filling reusable water bottles. The present sustainability program started in 2013, when 74 p.c of the Festival’s waste was diverted from landfills to composting. Today, the sustainability program continues to deal with waste diversion and useful resource restoration.

“If we take the time to separate, we can actually extract quite a bit of resources from what we would see as just waste,” Haas says. “We do that through compost and recycling.”

The sustainability workforce just lately toured the recycling facility which processes the Festival’s waste and noticed how recyclable supplies are sorted mechanically and manually. The compost goes to a business composting facility, the place waste is heated and aerated till it’s damaged down into soil, then offered to farms.

In the years following the 2013 Festival, waste diversion improved to the purpose that in 2016, the diversion charge was 97 p.c, incomes the Festival the American Alliance of Museums’ Sustainability Excellence Award. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the Festival on-line, and the following years have been a interval of rebuilding for the Festival and its sustainability program. Last 12 months, the diversion charge recovered to 90 p.c: 31,610 kilos of waste diverted from landfills. Haas’s purpose this 12 months is to keep up or exceed that charge. In future years, she hopes to proceed the excessive charges of waste diversion, in addition to associate with native teams to repurpose discarded supplies.

To obtain this 12 months’s objectives, the Festival gives useful resource restoration stations across the grounds, staffed by volunteers. All containers and utensils from the Festival concessions are both recyclable or compostable, so the one waste that the Festival sends to the landfill will likely be introduced in from exterior.

So how can guests to the Festival assist attain the purpose of 90 p.c waste diversion?

Haas’s recommendation: “We encourage visitors to use our resource recovery stations. We have hopefully two or more volunteers staffing every station, and they’re really knowledgeable. They’ll help you sort your waste, and if you don’t feel like sorting it, they’ll do it for you. They have a lot of information on our program and composting and recycling in general that they can share.”

Among the sustainability program’s latest initiatives is partnering with Plugged In: D.C.-Area Community Resources Fair. Located within the Smithsonian’s Arts + Industries Building in the course of the Festival, the sources honest highlights native youth organizations and communities for guests who wish to get entangled. One of the honest’s individuals is the Student Conservation Association, an group which affords paid conservation jobs for highschool college students and younger adults within the space.

Organizations just like the Student Conservation Association, very similar to the volunteers on the Festival, present how essential sustainability is to youth. While younger individuals stands out as the most probably to be affected by the local weather disaster, they aren’t solely victims. They’re additionally passionate, efficient individuals working arduous to guard the surroundings.

Ella Peters is an intern within the Festival’s Storytellers Workshop and a rising senior at Georgetown University finding out anthropology and authorities.