Greening The Danson Festival

Sponsored by Cory Riverside

There are some people visiting the Danson Festival who are old enough to remember the days before the Keep Britain Tidy campaign came into being. It got really started in the late 1960s but 20 years earlier the Ladies of the WI (pictured above) had got the ball rolling – and you wouldn’t want to upset those lovely ladies – would you?

Not dropping litter has become a way of life for most of us and not having to climb over piles of rubbish to get to the shops is a big improvement. In the last 10 years, we have all got used to recycling and Danson Festival is making sure that we all play our part as well as having a great time.  

Here’s how you get involved:

Danson Park is one of the most beautiful parklands in London and probably one of the best in the country. It regularly wins awards and thousands of people enjoy the Park all year round.

Everyone who enjoys Danson Festival has a part to play in making sure this lovely place doesn’t suffer because we are all having a good time.  First step is to use the bins that we provide to dispose of litter.

In 2011, we bought in a team of recycling specialists to the Festival who put out a range of litter bins which means that you now have to think about which bin your rubbish goes in – it’s not difficult and it’s also a great help. 

If you make the right choice, we can send your waste straight into the right recycling stream. If you stick it all in one bin, some poor soul has to spread it on the ground and sort it out.  To be honest, they have better things to do – so spend 10 seconds thinking about which bin to use!

Now for some facts – In 2011, about 70,000 people enjoyed Danson Festival over two days.

We now know that we all produced a total of 8.78 tonnes of waste. The highlights of which were: 0.4 tonnes of glass, 0.86 tonnes of plastic bottles and cans and 0.94 of paper and cardboard. Out of this we recycled 2.2 tonnes of waste which is 25.06 % of the total.

Which is a good effort but we all know we can do better!  

So what happens to the waste that we can’t recycle? Cory Environmental who are supporting Danson Festival and in particular the Greening the Festival initiative have recently opened their Riverside Resource Recovery Facility in Belvedere in the London Borough of Bexley. It’s a state of the art facility which generates energy to supply the local electricity grid. It’s an amazing process and you can find out more about it at www.coryenvironmental.co.uk/page/riversideresourcerecovery

As a result, after you have recycled all you can into the different bins, the rubbish left over which can’t be recycled no longer goes to landfill but is used to help provide London’s electricity!

So, loads of people, some very impressive machinery and technology are involved in this process but the most important part is you – have a great time at Danson Festival and make sure you use the right bin!

And here are a few more facts – if you still haven’t got the message!

• The energy conserved by recycling one glass bottle is enough to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.
• Glass is a special material, because it can be recycled over and over again without wearing out.
• It takes 70 percent less energy to make recycled paper than to make brand-new paper
• If you chopped down a 15-year-old tree and used it to make paper grocery bags, you'd wind up with about 700. That's roughly the number of bags your local supermarket goes through in an hour