I worked for the Cleveland International Film Festival last year. I am more than willing to admit that I was originally lured in by a desire to see some free movies. What I didn’t expect was to meet so many cool people. I thought the CIFF was a simple little arts festival. You get a bunch of film makers to send you some films and you sell some tickets and voila! Not so much. Instead, it takes a year of planning to choose the films and plan the details. It takes countless hours of designing graphics, organizing staff, cultivating sponsorships, and working out little things to get herds of film lovers to continue to come every year and to make them all happy. Thousands of tickets are sold every year to some of the greatest films, making the Cleveland International Film Festival one of the premiere arts and culture events in the world.
If you can imagine the challenges in trying to organize and herd thousands of theater goers, hundreds of volunteers and a group of dedicated staff, then you can probably picture the amount of paper that it takes. Tickets, programs, updates… it boggles the mind. Then there is the hospitality headquarters for guests and season pass holders. Hundreds of people shuffled through the suite last year creating bag after bag of trash. We did our best to recycle cans and bottles, but that was just a fraction of the trash that was created. This year, the CIFF got just a little greener.
With the help of Rosby’s and Forest City, the CIFF will be composting the waste from the Hospitality Headquarters. When we say composting, we don’t mean just food stuffs. We will be using products from Eco Green. These products are made from sugar cane fibers or other material and will all break down in just a few months. I was surprised to find that these products are carried locally by Northern Haserot. I am excited to see just how much we can divert from the landfill this year. This plan does not come without its challenges. I attend a lot of events every year. Even “green” event attendees often do not recycle. I am usually the weird guy who can be found digging through the garbage pulling bottles and cans out to recycle. We will be collecting everyone’s trash and separating it ourselves. I hope that this will also help to raise awareness about our trash generation. Watch this space to see how it works out…
Tags: CIFF, composting, trash
