Beyond the headliners, performers, food and traffic that make Outside Lands a premier weekend series, it also comes with a lot of trash — and a system for dealing with it.
With assigned volunteers known as trash talkers at each waste station instructing attendees, 95 percent of trash makes its way from the festival grounds to on-site dumpsters. A dedicated group of workers sorts the other 5 percent in a secluded area near the festival grounds.
“Historically, we have really been on the front of sustainability,” said Annie Farman, the director of sustainability for Outside Lands. “We’re lucky to be in the city of San Francisco. People are pretty aware and they’re very conscious about our footprint on this planet.”
Farman said Outside Lands has the highest waste diversion rate of any large-scale festival in the United States. Some 89 percent of it stays out of landfills, thanks to multiple initiatives and efforts from volunteers and staff.
As it has done in previous years, Outside Lands partnered with two waste management organizations to assist with the abundance of trash a three-day festival produces.
Clean Vibes, an on-site waste management organization for festivals and events has more than 500 volunteer trash talkers who bus tables and inform attendees how to properly sort their trash. Volunteers are also ground sweepers and clean-up crews.
“A lot of these folks, I think, are less interested in the music and just really excited about the experience of being a part of the event in this capacity, helping with the sustainability,” said Anna Borofsky, the co-owner of Clean Vibes. While that’s a sentiment that could not be confirmed, there were an awful lot of volunteers walking the talk.
“You get to keep Mother Earth safe, and also watch all these amazing artists,” said volunteer Nathanael Beceriril Diaz who, like other volunteers, got a free ticket all three days in exchange for 12 hours of volunteering.
He and others get ignored at times, he said, and trash is dumped into the wrong bag.
“But then it’s on us to correct their mistakes and hope someone will care more the next time,” he said.
After trash is mitigated by Clean Vibes volunteers, another group of trash from vendors and ground sweepers makes its way to the next group: The workers at Green Mary, an eco-friendly organization that specializes in sorting landfill, compost and recycling at the event.
This trash — 95 percent of it — goes to onsite dumpsters provided by Recology.
The 5 percent of trash picked up near vendors or from ground sweeping goes to the 16 Green Mary workers in the area they call “Middle Earth,” a secluded area in Golden Gate Park.
There, it is sorted. Compost, wood, metals, textiles, and asphalt are just a few of the things they come across. After that trash is sorted and loaded into large shipping containers, the latter return to the Clean Vibes team.
Every day there are some 22 containers that Clean Vibes ships out to either landfills or a repurposing center for some materials. By the end of the weekend, more than 75 hauls will have been made to their proper disposal destination.
“Having large gatherings like this, it’s both important that we make them as sustainable as possible, but also make it an opportunity to educate people,” Borofsky said. “If we can show them that in Golden Gate Park, in a sea of 75,000 people, we can divert almost all the waste, there’s no reason that they can’t take that and do that at home as well.”
This article was corrected. An earlier version had the sorting and disposal process confused.
Trash Lands