Our 26th Fourth of July in Jamestown

For 26 years straight, Green Girl Recycling has had the honor of helping Jamestown celebrate the Fourth of July the Zero Waste way. And here is something we have learned after more than a quarter-century of doing this event: we still learn something new every single year.

Every Fourth of July teaches us better ways to create diversion, improve our systems and make things run more smoothly. Sometimes the best new ideas are not complicated at all.

This year’s biggest composting lesson? (Put the food scraps in a 5-gallon bucket) That was it. Simple, easy and incredibly effective.

We diverted 8 pounds of food scraps for composting at the pancake breakfast. Later in the day, the taco truck and hot dog stands added another 20 pounds of compostable food waste. That is 28 pounds of known food-service compost kept out of the landfill, plus all the food scraps brought to us throughout the day by Fourth of July participants. There was some memorable compost this year. The biggest stars of the compost bucket may have been watermelon rinds and cold sheet pizza! 🍉🍕 (another lesson learned: dog poop yes.. that was also a big 'thing' - new signage for next year in the works!

Starting the Day at the Small Park

For the Zero Waste pancake breakfast, Green Girl Recycling created three waste diversion stations throughout the small park. By the end of breakfast, we had diverted:

• 385 pounds of single-stream recycling!

  
  

Then it was time to pack up, move to the big park and start all over again.

Noon Until Midnight… and Then Some (LOL)

The second half of the Fourth of July celebration started at noon and kept us going until midnight. To be honest.. we park a truck at the big park as a 'base camp' and leave it until Sunday. There are so many people camping over night now.. we come back on Sunday for final clean up before leaving to weigh and track all our diversion efforts.

At the big park, we diverted another:

• 1,290 pounds of single-stream recycling!

That brings this year’s total to an incredible:

• 1,675 pounds of single-stream recycling diverted from the landfill, along with the compost we collected throughout the day.

  
  

Not bad for a little mountain town with one very big Fourth of July celebration!

And After 26 Years… I Finally Won Something Else!

This year also brought a completely different kind of victory.

I entered the hula-hoop contest and WON! 🏆⭕️ A huge thank you to Madison with Mad About Hoops for adding so much fun to the celebration. Apparently, after 26 years of running around Jamestown making sure bottles, cans, food scraps and trash end up in the right place, I had just enough energy left to keep a hula hoop spinning!

Still Learning. Still Improving. Still Diverting.

Twenty-six years is a long time to do anything.

But I think one of the reasons I love this event so much is that it never feels exactly the same. Every year we find something we can do better. Every year we improve the system. Every year we learn a new trick.

And after 26 straight years, Green Girl Recycling is still incredibly proud to be part of Jamestown’s Fourth of July tradition and to help this amazing mountain community celebrate BEING GREEN - leading with diversion first.

Here’s to year 27! ♻️🇺🇸 GET READY: We are talking about making a real 4th of July FLOAT and being in the parade next year -- send float ideas to Bridget please: bridget@greengirlrecycling.com