Zone Verde

Zone Verde at Carnaval San Francisco

Being promoted as San Francisco's largest outdoor green event, the Zone Verde, part of this year's 30th annual Carnaval Festival, is converting one city block into an eco-friendly space filled with performances, information about local sustainable resources and food, music and drink.

One of the key elements to creating the space was to ensure the Latino culture being celebrated was incorporated into the information and the green message being promoted. Douglas Kolberg, the Zone Verde coordinator, brought his years of experience in green event production and cultural events in San Francisco together to create a Green Zone that would best serve the Mission District community. The majority of information and performances will be in English and Spanish, including a bi-lingual yoga class directed by Yoga Tree. Kolberg, who wears proudly a t-shirt that says, "Green is not necessarily White," was passionate about bringing information and entertainment to celebrate San Francisco's urban environment in away that translated to the city's Latino community.

To help orchestrate the production needed to minimize waste and create a green festival, Kolberg is working with eco-event pros such as Green Mary, Green Festivals, Nature in the City, SF Department of the Environment and Clean City. To create an "interactive and educational space" non-profits such as the Sustainable Living Roadshow and Poder have signed up. "I wanted to approach this from a Fair Trade and International aspect for the booths and event participants," commented Kolberg. San Francisco, as a city, is getting a routine in place to support green events through it's municipal organizations and experienced festival producers - come down to Carnaval's Zone Verde to see the machine in action on Harrison and Treat Streets at 17th Street.

Looking to get hands-on experience working on a green festival? Douglas and the festival organizers are still in need of great volunteers. Call 415-875-9224 to sign up.

Taste 2008!

On April 17, 2008 Root Division held their annual Taste fundraising event with the support of their resident artists, local restaurants, beverage companies and Twirl to raise money for their education programs. The art gallery was packed with art lovers, fashionistas and foodies all tasting samples of Andalu, Bar Bambino, Brick, Cantina Lounge, Cook Club, El Buen Comer & La Cocina, Maverick, Ozumo and Zazil while imbibing drinks from Trumer Pils, Lotus Vodka, Ritual Coffee Roasters, and Grown Up Soda. How's that for a mouthful!

The environmental considerations woven into the event were:
• Artist designed re-usable bags for the gift bag
• Only local restaurants participated, most with sustainable food purchasing programs
• Trumer Pils and Lotus Vodka are both manufactured in the Bay Area
• Re-usable glassware was used for beverages
• Recycling and composting were available on site (with instructions and signage)
• Invitations were printed on recycled paper
• All the disposable serving ware and napkins were either paper or compostable
• Each food prep station was given individual compost bins to raise our waste diversion ration and make it easy for our chefs to compost on-site.

With all of our green initiatives for the event met we wound up with only 2 bags (about 8-10lbs) of landfill waste from the 300+ person event. Next year we'll get down to less than 1!!!

Home Sweet Home

After completing our first holiday season as Twirl, we decided it was time to change things up a little and move office space. We are now located at 18th and Treat Streets in the Mission District of San Francisco, at a new building run by ActivSpace. This past January has been filled with designing the layout of out new office, building shelves, painting walls, and moving into our new space.

Though not a party or a meeting, this was quite the event for us and we set a goal to follow good environmental practices at each step of the move. We thought that it would be a good idea to chronicle some of our work here!

First we found a perfect fit at ActivSpace which utilized many green building practices, as most of their properties do. Though not LEED designated, the building is the equivalent to a LEED Silver level. We, of course, chose an office right in the center of the quad, smack in the middle of the action like the party people we are.

For décor and furnishings we went to Eco-Home Improvement to pick up Nolo and American Pride paints. We of course re-used our existing furniture, and we supplemented these with used items including shelves, side tables, chairs, and serving ware purchased from sources like Craig’s List, Goodwill, the Salvation Army and Cookin’ (a wonderful little store crammed with used specialty kitchen items). We bought power strips so that we can turn off all of our appliances when we go home for the evening. The new items we acquired were an Energy Star mini-Fridge (where else would you store the champagne?) and beautifully crafted trays made from acacia wood.

We are so happy with our new home away from home. Let us know if you would like to come by for a cup of tea!

Cheers!

Green Festival 2007

Wow! What a weekend! Green Festival was fantastic!

Kelin Backman of Sonoma County based E(Vent) Creations and I arrived on Thursday to set up around noon. The Concourse was already fully buzzing from activity of all the vendors and volunteers setting up to be ready for the following day. We carefully laid out our screens, hung our signs and displays in the next few hours. The booth was shaping up beautifully and we went home to get a good nights sleep to be energized for the following few days.

Kelin, Vanessa Hauswald, the other co-owner of E(Vent), and I arrived Friday around 10am Friday morning to apply our finishing touches. We set out our marketing materials and ventured out to the San Francisco Flower Mart to pick up gorgeous bundles of Tuberose that left a wonderful scent all around our booth. The festival kicked off at 2pm and as visitors trickled in, we all started to become aware of what a great opportunity participating at this festival was going to be.

Over the next 3 days we had many visitors: potential clients, new vendors, members of the press, job seekers, and generally interested people in what exactly is a “Green Event” (including a few skeptics). The three of us easily maneuvered around each other explaining our companies methods and purpose, sharing tips and educating the public on how they can either use our services or take our tips home and green their own events. We were able to take turns venturing out of the booth to visit other vendors and watch some of the informative speakers presenting at the festival.

Come Sunday at 6pm, we started packing up and were able to leave our booth spotless in 40 minutes with only creating 1 bag of trash, of which half was compostable, from the entire weekend.

Our two companies and three ladies left the event tired, happy and very excited about all of the doors our participation in Green Festivals opened up for us. It was also wonderful to know that both our companies compliment each other well and I hope for future collaborations in the future! We are definitely planning to come back next year.

Producing a Sustainable Trade Show Booth Part 2

Sign construction is something new for me. I’ve designed, placed orders for, and hung sign, but never built one. This was a definite labor of love.

We wanted a sign that was going to have life outside of the trade show floor and would illustrate the style and design strength Twirl brings to each event it builds, with the environment and sustainability in mind.

I enlisted the help of Anton Berteaux, an experienced builder and welder, Matt Williams, a talented designer and Chuck Inman of Phantom Signs to advise on materials, design and construction instruction. Their expertise was invaluable!

I purchased non-VOC paint from Eco-Home Improvement in Berkeley and repurposed all of the other materials from various sources like scrap yards and leftovers from Chuck’s shop.

Anton offered his shop in on his solar-powered farm in Winters and under his direction, I hand cut the copper to form the lettering of the Twirl logo.

The other part of my contribution to the booth was the word display to describe elements of green event design. As mentioned in the previous post all the materials were sourced from Scrap. Another green addition to this project was the staff at Eco-Home Improvement recommended that I can take the non-VOC paint I purchased from them to Purcell Paint, also in Berkeley and have it filled into a spray paint can for easier application. I had made stencils of the words and spray painting the lettering made the job quicker and easier to accomplish.

Now I am packing up my toolbox with scissors, tape, glue, twine, clothes pins, measuring tape, cards, new business cards, and the organic table cloths for smooth and efficient installation at the San Francisco Concourse. I am ready for this trade show to start!

Producing a Sustainable Trade Show Booth Part 1

Twirl Management and E(Vent) Creations are sharing a booth at this year’s Green Festival taking place at the San Francisco Concourse, November 9-11, 2007. Our goal for the booth is to illustrate how recycled and sustainable materials can produce high quality, well designed events, meetings, and celebrations.

We began our booth design and construction with retrieving resources and then seeing how we could use various elements together. We had the benefit of two farms located in Petaluma to salvage used materials and supplies. Additionally we shopped at Scrap, a re-use art store located in San Francisco. We have finalized the design as being two large dividing screens re-purposed from the Museum of Natural History’s dump nearly 20 years ago using them to flank the booth and provide surface area to mount images and teams for our booth. The back wall will be rows of framed wording in black and white. The frames and canvases all came from Scrap. Additionally we will have a table set out draped in an organic table cloth from Hands On the Table, who make organic and hemp table cloths for retail and special events.

We are handing out limited printed material so as minimize waste creation. We are excited about our mini ‘How To Plan Your Next Event Green’ postcard where interested visitors can fill in the categories on the card with the resources they find at the festival. This will be a great way to teach the festival visitors how they can simply reduce their waste from their dinner parties and use more sustainable products to entertain their guests. Additionally, they can use the postcard as a note to themselves for later reference. We had the cards printed locally in San Francisco at www.GreenPostcards.com, a printing company that uses 100% recycled paper, soy based inks and varnishes, an energy efficient printing press, 100% wind power energy and Union Labor.

Our next step in the production is to start manufacturing the designs. I’m off to the Sommerset Farm in Winters, California to build the Twirl Sign!