Telus TaiwanFest diverts 82 percent of garbage out of the waste stream

by Charlie Smith on Sep 8, 2012 at 6:03 pm
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Tzu Chi Foundation Canada CEO Gary Ho accepts a certificate from recycling advocate Andrew Pavlik.
Charlie Smith

Here's a statistic that might surprise you. Last weekend's Telus TaiwanFest generated 7.4 tonnes of trash, according to Andrew Pavlik, a partner in Food Waste Recyclers.

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But a remarkable 82 percent of this garbage was diverted from the waste stream, thanks largely to volunteers from the Tzu Chi Canada Foundation.

Pavlik made the revelation today at a lunch honouring the festival's volunteers and sponsors.

He presented a certificate toTzu Chi Foundation Canada CEO Gary Ho, who heads up the Buddhist charity in this country.

This meant that Telus TaiwanFest exceeded Metro Vancouver's diversion goal of 70 percent by 2015 and its "aspirational target" of 80 percent by 2020.

Much of the garbage was generated through a street banquet along Granville Street on the Labour Day weekend, though there were also musical performances outside the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Festival organizer Charlie Wu said that 16,000 meals were served during the event, which celebrates Taiwanese arts, culture, and dining.


Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.

Comments (4) Add New Comment
MdGhjff
Sep 8, 2012 at 7:48 pm
Are you listening, Vaisakhi Parade?
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Statisfusion
Sep 11, 2012 at 10:36 pm
Congratulations on the efforts to redirect trash headed to the landfill. But isn't 16,280 pounds (7.4 kg) a lot of garbage in the first place? For each meal served at the festival, one pound of garbage was produced. Even though 82 % was diverted from the waste stream, it ultimately ends up somewhere and begs the question "Was this really necessary?" . MV's target is simplistic and subject to misuse and misunderstanding. The diversion % will increase by increasing the amount of extra material sent to recycling or soaking your papers with water. Couldn't we have a better metric such as tonnes per resident. If the average goes down, something good is happening, if not, then an increasing recycling % is meaningless.
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Nunya Biznis
Sep 13, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Speaking of Telus garbage, how about the mail they send out on super high gloss, high quality paper with a picture of a cute fuzzy animal on one side. On the other side "The future is friendly" That's trash and nothing more.
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My Voice
Sep 18, 2012 at 5:03 pm
@Statisfusion - I'm sure that if we're reducing the actual amount of waste going to landfill is better than all of it going there. Recycling, Reusing and Reducing is the goal and it looks like it's working for this event. I hope more events try to do the same. Have you heard of garbage island? We definitely don't need any more of those on this earth. Recycling is allowing us to make use of what used to be just waste piling up. Kudos TaiwanFest, Andrew Pavlik and Tzu Chi Foundation!
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