As Sunday afternoon wound down and the last of the festival gear was packed away, we took a moment to reflect on how far things had come since early spring, when plans for this year’s Stewart Park Festival first began to take shape. The biggest decision made early on was to scale up, launching two centralized greening stations, which would require a lot of hands. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to grow in our third year, we pushed onward and put out a bold (and hopeful) call for a lot of volunteers.

Exceeding expectations, more than 35 volunteers—over half of them new to the experience—signed up, with many returning for multiple shifts across the weekend. All bringing with them a curiosity, professionalism, and shared commitment to this project. Months of preparation came to life on Friday as the festival kicked off and passersby gravitated to our stations as planned with genuine enthusiasm. The energy and care of our new and returning volunteers made it possible to divert over 500 lbs of waste this year! All while sparking meaningful conversations about the nuances of recycling rules and how local waste systems work. 

Another key systems-level shift took place this year with Town of Perth support; public garbage bins were removed from the main park to encourage centralized sorting and reduce the risk of contamination. The result? Less litter, and the opportunity for us to engage festival-goers directly on why recycling and composting can be so complicated and why small actions, taken together, can have an outsized impact especially when it comes to events. 

Behind the scenes, we connected with vendors about the materials they were using and how their packaging choices align (or don’t) with local waste infrastructure. After a closer look, compostable plastics surfaced as a recurring point of confusion. While often marketed as a greener alternative, these materials typically require commercial composting facilities to break down and unfortunately, they aren’t currently accepted in the local stream. For most people, you’d only know that if you flipped the container over and squinted to read the fine print: “COMMERCIAL COMPOST ONLY.”

As a coincidence we had experimented on this issue leading up to the festival to show an example to the public of how stuff breaks down.  Our Board Chair, Scott Hortop, took it into his own compost pile, literally. He buried a Tim Hortons coffee into one of his buckets of compost. Within weeks, the paper exterior broke down completely, leaving behind a familiar reminder: the stubborn inner plastic liner. To build on this, we’ve since added a compostable plastic item to test just how long they’ll take to degrade under backyard conditions. In addition to reaching out to potential processing partners to explore longer-term solutions. Especially for the items that were sorted and waiting to be taken care of.  (While searching for a location to take the sorted ‘compostable plastic’ I came across a CBC article that was found reporting on The National Arts Centre who tackled this same issue in 2020. Read more about their approach here.)

We’re deeply grateful to all those who made this year’s efforts possible, from Town staff to committee organizers to the volunteers who showed up with open minds and willing hands. A special thank you goes to Tony Hendriks and Mercedes Steedman, our greening committee leaders, whose behind-the-scenes work made the weekend run smoothly.

As always, this work is iterative. We’ll continue reviewing what worked, what didn’t, and how we can grow. And we’re already thinking ahead: to next summer’s festival, to deeper partnerships, and to making local climate action more visible, accessible, and impactful.