As the 24th Festival International comes to an end, clean up will go on for many hours to come. Clean up begins after the first stage closed at 4 p.m. The recycling foundation and ameri-corps have teamed with waste management to make downtown look spic and span by Monday morning.
More than 40 people are volunteering with Americorps to clean up. It's something Richard Day has been doing for more than 15 years, "I recycle wherever I am. Most of the individual volunteers do it before the festival so they get to enjoy the music during the day." The exact numbers for 2010 have yet to be released but in previous years seven to 10 tons of trash was picked up. This year event organizers are expecting more.
"We do recycle aluminum cans, the plastic go cups, pretty much we do take some glass from a lot of the alcohol venders," said Gm of festival recycling, Mauri Robichaux. Amongst all the clean up one of the hardest things to get off the ground are cigarette buds. That's why street sweepers are so important, because cigarette buds are very harmful to the environment. "One cigarette bud in a two litter bottle of water can kill up to 75 percent of the water flees in the water," said Robichaux.
The good news for the volunteers is they have help. "Waste management has dumpsters out here for us for garbage that they empty constantly for us. We have five eight yard dumpsters and one 40 yard dumpster that gets emptied every single day," said Robichaux. "By Tuesday it will look like we were never here," said Dana Canedo, Festival Manager.
Waste management picks up all the trash that can't be recycled with street sweepers. Event organizers say the majority of the garbage will be cleaned up by 7 a.m, Monday morning.
Sarah Rosario
srosario@katctv.com


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