Actually, those ideas did happen this year, with eco-friendly food containers at the burger shack, and the bucket of fries was a rental. The water is free, filtered, and you bring your own container, you can also bring your own dishes to the food court, I did sometimes, and no problems.

Keep those ideas coming, believe it, reducing waste is a priority, better yet, make the waste=food concept fly. This festival is a great place for ideas to flourish, the ranch has that way...

And burning is not bad, nature does it all the time. Don't feel guilty about what your car does to the environment, it is a very small part of a massive scale, and the impact we all make still means little. Working on pollution is a great idea, I am working on a clean car soon, hopefully alcohol burning, as that is looking like the best bet, make gas out of food scraps, Back to the Future!

Cool, let's keep the discussion going, when I say whining, it relates to those of us who do nothing and offer no solutions, not really constructive I feel.

Peace

well, i'm a little late for this discussion but what the hell, he're goes...

"i think those ideas are a bit too progressive and earth-friendly for shambhala, imho. there has never been an emphasis on LNT nor any other eco-friendly concepts at shambhala"

FYI there was a $1000 fine for vendors not using biodegradable products for the entire food court. to my knowledge, the only thing not readily biodegradable were the returnables (which are sorted and returned for a lot of money, mine were stolen actually, probably between $300 and $600 worth) and the coffee lids which are not yet available, but are recyclable.

it is not the festival that pollutes, it's the people that come to the festival that pollute. before i started this coffee empire hobby of mine, i would go to shambles and bring my own food and strut my own mug and water bottle. when i purchased at the food court, any garbage and recycling would be sorted at my camp, and packed out with the rest of my stuff. pack in, pack out.

stop blaming the festival and the vendors.

take your shit into your own hands and be responsible for your own garbage that you produce. if you find it dirty and it's not your fault, well, maybe it's the people around you that are polluting, maybe you should ask yourself why you are partying with a bunch of debaucherous polluters. really! shambles is trying to figure out how to make people to stop leaving their couches there. do you know how much it costs to collect 50 couches and bring them to the dump? how much gas, staff wages, dump fees, environment!!! "oh cool, we'll just leave it there and it will be there next year at our camp..." well, the cows will shit on it, the rats will move in, the rot will set in and then it will look ugly and stink for the next 3 years at shambles and take up another killer camping spot.

or how about the assholes that each had a brand new cheap pop tent with their own mini camping toilets. about 8 of them. in the end, 8 full toilets were left in one tent and the group disappeared. ya!

vendors are completely accountable for their spot. shambles have our phone numbers, they know where we camp, they have our credit card numbers, and we want to come back next year. we sort our cardboard, compost, returnables and garbage and shambles takes it off our hands. i rinsed and brought back to nelson every recyclable milk gallon and tetra pack because shambles doesn't supply that. so what! i produced it so i'm going to deal with it.

fyi, each vendor has to send 2 employees to the eating area to clean up your shit for one hour twice per day because people can't even put their garbage in the fuken garbage cans. YANNO!!!

yes, vendors and "the festival" supply "the garbage" because you purchase it. but you purchased it, you now own it. fuken deal with it already. if you bring your own mug, i will not refuse to fill it. (unless it looks really really dirty).

i really studied this for the last decade. check it out. yes we could set up a dish pit and we all clean our own dishes that we bring or rent or buy at the festival. but:
correctly done, a real dish pit would
1.need many staff
2.produce a huge amount of bleach in the gray water system
3.produce a huge amount of gray water in the tanks that need to be pumped with a gas pump into gasoline using trucks and driven off site to a water facility.
4.need a huge amount of gas or propane to bring the water to adequate temperature for dish washing

a dish pit that is not correctly used will actually make your dishes more dirty and risky for food safety.

correctly done, a real dish pit at shambles has a carbon footprint that is very comparable if not way worse than using biodegradable cups and bringing the lids home to your own recycling facility.

use your own mug, just don't get it dirty in the first place. bring your own spork and put it in your bag with your water bottle and stuff.
if you rinse your own stuff right away and put it away and don't share, it will stay relatively clean.

yes, i'm moralizing like crazy, i know. i'm just sick of people blaming the festival and the vendors.

when i left, on thursday, the food court was looking pretty clean, but the camping parking lot... still needed some TLC.

the garbage produced in the food court is nowhere near where all the garbage is from. look in the bins, count the bins, it's not a bunch of biodegradable potato starch forks and burger plates and coffee cups that are filling up those bins!
IT'S THE FUKEN couches and tents with toilets in it and broken camping chairs and dirty wet sleeping bags and bikes and shitty broken plastic tables and rotten coolers full of rotten food and ripped tarps and stupid shitty camping gear and clothes and stuffed animals and cars, yes even cars and tent poles and tents and tents and tents.

the way i see it is, it's the people. the people who create such garbage and leave it at shamble probably create as much garbage on a regular basis in their everyday lives. we just don't see it because our cities have created such infrastructure in order for us to not see it and easily let it be dealt with on a daily basis. it costs us alot in our taxes and we hide it in the environment and we pretend is gone and when we see it on the news, we bitch about our taxes and we blame the government.

well this is exactly what is going on at shambles... people bitch about the price of the ticket but it would be lower if shambles didn't have to use up so much money to clean up your shit. people see some of it so people blame the infrastructure because that is what people know.

it's up to us to stop it in it's tracks!

"the festival" supplies the music. "the people" come to listen to music, bring their shit and leave it everywhere.

"the festival" puts all their party equipment in storage until next year and then, they have to clean up your shit and pay to get rid of it.

if you all bring your shit home and put it in your garbage and recycling, your city will pay for it in an already set up infrastructure and maybe shambles tickets would be cheaper and the grounds would look nicer.

ok, i'm done.
thanx for reading.
and thanx for supporting Niko's Bliss Café

lovanlight
niko

sons of aurora were at Boom this year. darvin is on a year long honeymoon, traveling the world.