As Lesley mentioned earlier, we signed up to volunteer at Green Festival. I've been wanting to get out and do more things in the city that potentially involve more people than just ourselves. Green Festival sounded kind of familiar since I worked at environmental events in college and it seemed like something easy and potentially fun to do. So, we signed up and went this past Saturday. The event took place at the convention center and filled up the exhibition hall.

The check-in process was a little disorganized and we weren't given a lot of direction on where to go, but we eventually found our way to the food court where we then had to try to figure out who to talk to so that we could figure out what we were supposed to be doing. We found out that we would be cleaning up the tables at the food court, which we already figured. Most people cleaned up their own areas, but we had to pick up things that were left and also we offered to take peoples' food if they were done. Then, there were four bins where we could put things: recycle, compost, mixed paper, and landfill. It was a little confusing at first to figure out which went where, especially since most of the plastic-looking items were made from corn and were biodegradable.

Once we got the hang of it, it was pretty easy. Since we started at 1:00, at first it was really busy as people were eating lunch, and it pretty difficult to get around to clean things up. Before we had the chance to clean up a lot of messes, people would sit down. But, things slowed down and then we were able to do a lot of cleaning. There were plenty of other volunteers, too, so we didn't have to do that much. It was actually really boring, since we just walked around trying to clean. The only time we talked to anyone was when someone asked us a question (which we usually didn't know the answer to). It seemed like it took forever for the first hour to end - and we signed up for 4 hours! But, since we weren't that busy, we took frequent breaks to get water and check out some of the exhibits.

After our shift was over, we bought some food from the food court and ate there. The food was actually pretty good, and thanks to the helpful volunteers, we didn't even have to get up to get rid of our plates. Even though we were tired from standing for 4 hours, we walked around the festival a little bit. There were mostly booths from environmentally-conscious businesses, including mattress manufacturers, clothing makers, and organic food producers. There was a lot of stuff there for pets and babies. We stopped by the table for the Snow Leopard Trust, which Lesley is a member of, and the table for Co-op America, which is the group that was partly responsible for setting up the Green Festival and is the group Lesley gave money to as an anniversary present to me.

Anyway, the festival itself wasn't that interesting, but even though it was boring and I don't feel like I got much out of it, I'm glad we did it because I guess it was good of us to volunteer and it was something sort of different to do.

Here is a picture of the food court: