Sustainability at the Festival

At CEC’s annual Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival, we pride ourselves on making this one of the cleanest, greenest and most sustainably-minded events around, improving every year as we go. Our notable onsite successes and efforts include the following:

• We divert over 90% of the festival’s waste stream from the landfill every year.

• We reduce plastic consumption by encouraging use of reusable cups and by providing water refill stations throughout the festival. We use compostable cups in our beer and wine garden, have offered stainless steel cups when possible, and require our food vendors to use compostable utensils and foodware.

• We’re changing the food festival experience by making sure all of our food vendors are selling products that contain locally grown and sustainably produced ingredients.

• Our free bike valet allows thousands of festival goers to ride to the event, reducing gas consumption, energy use and traffic while also encouraging some good ol’ fashioned exercise. In addition, we strongly encourage vendors and participants to walk, carpool or ride the bus to the festival.

With an event of this size, we recognize that there will be environmental impacts regardless of how much we try. If you have suggestions on how we can improve, please let us know! In the meantime, join us and take advantage of all the festival has to offer.

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