Green Mary - Zero Waste Events & GoodWerks

What and why - "EVENT WASTE DIVERSION AND ECO EDUCATION"

Greening is spreading around the country and is blooming all over in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Whether initiated by producers' great green hearts, spurred by specific awareness of limited resources, heeding public and event peer pressure or yielding to municipal and state mandate, matter to the landfill is shrinking as recycling and compost matter is maximized.

It is easy to produce near-zero waste events with a bit of focused attention behind the scenes. We manage it at over 150 event dates per year, from music festivals and road races to conferences and fund raisers. We can do it for you or train you to do it yourself!

Waste diversion and resource maximization is all that our ten-year old event support company focuses on and it's our pleasure to pass the passion along. We have over 50 employees who are endlessly enthusiastic about both waste diversion and training folks how to do it themselves, at events, home and the office.

In order to help produce zero waste at public events, we:

Coordinate with event insiders, haulers and venue operators to establish effective waste diversion systems, arranging for and providing all trash- related materials.

Determine what is necessary in the way of equipment and containers for any size event.

Provide food vendor letters for any location, detailing the greenest wares according to what the haulers really accept, what is truly recyclable and compostable - it varies quite a bit around the Bay Area.

Manage everything from event set up and providing event-specific signage to sorting every bag and doing final grounds clean up!

Take all trashy matters off event shoulders and reach diversion rates of up to 95% as we make soil and recycle tons of material every year.

Great for the planet and completely LOCAL!

GOODWERKS

Goodwerks is the new nonprofit organization taking over where long-established zero-waste entity Green Mary takes off. We provide creative, human-centric resource distribution and re-distribution, environmental education, the conducting of zero-waste projects, staffing and services to support events, municipalities, organizations, our underserved communities and the planet.

We are assuming management of a water distribution project solidly underway in the East Bay,currently conducted by the Berkeley Free Clinic and an all-volunteer cadre there. In June, Green Mary staff, kept afloat by the Paycheck Protection Program, began learning the water management tasks and then taking over water distribution to ten encampments throughout Oakland and Berkeley. We were shown the locations, and had explained to us the distribution requirements, the strict sanitation procedures and learend how to put together the 275-gallon water distribution systems and the clever hand wash stations. In September, Green Mary spawned Goodwerks and it is the staff of this nonprofit organization that will be carrying on the project.

There are upwards of ten camps awaiting reliable water delivery in these two cities alone, and dozens of others throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, all the way up to Santa Rosa, with its particular issues regarding the regular, forced disbanding of the camps for the unhoused. The organization will continue working with the existing cadre of community activists, Berkeley Free Clinic volunteers and others who have their fingers on the pulse and their hands on the water buckets, as it were, as well as collaborating with those who are envisioning more permanent water solutions. In 2021, Goodwerks seeks financial support to continue and expand this mission.

Project Benefits:

1. Ensuring timely and adequate supply of clean water.
2. Providing bulk water greatly minimizes single-use plastic water bottles from being consumed and tossed. One 275-gallon tank, the average consumed per week at one Berkeley location, is the equivalent of 2,200 16-ounce water bottle.
3. The water stations keep already challenged residents hydrated, provide access to water for cooking, and enables them to clean themselves. The simple hand wash stations increase opportunities for sanitation.
4. Frees up invaluable volunteer resources already stretched thin by passing the project onto Goodwerks for ongoing execution.
5. Allows for the installation and service of more drinking water tanks and hand wash stations.
6. Goodwerks has the bandwidth, existing connections and resources to collaborate with other vested individuals and organizations to see to the immediate and envision the expansion.
7. Goodwerks, as an outgrowth of Green Mary, has the infrastructure to participate in and tackle the clean up of the encampments, extending significantly beyond the water delivery project.

goodwerks.org