Dear Community,
Is it a marketing miracle or meant-to-be that the first day of Festival International de Louisiane 2020 is Earth Day? That’s right, mark your calendars for April 22-26, 2020 and a Festival International experience with a slightly green-er hue!
As a reminder, we’ll be incentivizing food vendors away from using styrofoam packaging items at their FIL booths. The incentive comes in the form of a subsidy meant to cover some of the increased costs associated with the environmentally-preferable materials, as well as a full-court marketing press around the initiative. Our team met with FIL staff last week for a post-funding kick off to work through some logistics regarding the vendor subsidy as well as a vendor-communication plan.
We’ve confirmed working with a company called Eco-Products to create a FIL-specific store on zerowasteevents.com. Vendors will be given a special code to login and order what they need for Festival International. We’ll have individual calls with vendors this month to determine what bagasse and other compostable items should be offered in this digital storefront. These calls will also serve to confirm our quantity estimates and gauge buy-in from vendors. We’ll then use this information to calculate the official subsidy parameters that will be possible with our 24HCP funding.
Vendors who use all compostable packaging at their booths will get the special “green vendor” designation on all communications about food and vendors — the FIL app, online, and even their physical booth signage! This way, Festival-goers will be able to search for green vendors and choose to eat from booths that use compostable packaging!
Our first all-vendor meeting will take place in January, so be ready for another big update in our next letter.
Happy Holidays from the Green Festival team!