The Humble Co. partners with Clean Vibes to reduce waste at festivals

Earlier this year, The Humble Co. partnered with Clean Vibes Trading Post to educate attendees at Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival about proper waste management. Today, Clean Vibes, LLC has helped divert over 15 million pounds of waste from entering landfills. We interviewed Mollie Herman from Clean Vibes, to learn more about how the organization is helping to reduce waste.

1. How did Clean Vibes Trading Post start?                                                                                                           In 2008, at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, the Clean Vibes Trading Post worked with event promoters, artists, and environmentally conscious companies to create a system of incentives to motivate fans to participate in recycling efforts. Fans could turn in pieces of recycling into the Clean Vibes Trading Post booth, collect points for each recycling piece, and later redeem their points for “prizes.” Prizes consisted of donations by the event producers, artists, and other eco-friendly companies. Examples include small prizes, such as sunscreen, to large prizes, such as free tickets to future events. Fans were excited about the opportunity to help keep Bonnaroo clean while earning cool prizes. The project was popular and effective!

2. Why did you choose to reduce waste at festivals, in particular?                                                                     Providing event attendees with immediate rewards enables us to directly engage people in the cleanup process, educate them about the importance of recycling and lessening as much of the event’s waste as possible from the landfill. If you can reduce waste at a festival, with all its challenges, you can most certainly do so at home!

3. What are some goals that Clean Vibes is working towards?                                                                           We strive to ENGAGE event attendees in the recycling process to participate in waste reduction. We aim to EDUCATE event attendees about environmentally responsible waste diversion. We intend to ELIMINATE recycling from landfills and decrease total landfill waste at each event. Clean Vibes Trading Post participants have diverted over 1.5 million cigarette butts and over 3 million recyclables from landfills at events across the United States.

4. How did you hear about The Humble Co. and what made you reach out to us?                                         Our Donations Coordinator discovered The Humble Co. She recently became aware of the plastic toothbrush pollution issue and changed over to bamboo a year or so ago, and says “It is a rewarding reminder to begin and end every day knowing small personal changes do make a big difference for our shared environment!”

5. What do you like about our products?                                                                                                       When simplicity is both beautiful, practical, and in favor of the planet – we believe there is harmony. The Humble Co.’s focus on the health of people and the planet illustrates this intertwined relationship.

6. In what ways do you think our collaboration is beneficial to Clean Vibes Trading Post?                         Clean Vibes Trading Post engages festival fans from all around the world through our incentive-based recycling programs. The Humble Co.’s generous donation showcases our commitment to eco-conscious companies while providing a recycling reward we believe in!

To learn more about reducing waste at festivals, visit www.cleanvibes.com and www.cleanvibestradingpost.org!