Vendors themselves can offer water refills which they charge for. At least festival goers will have an option to use lesser plastic bottles.

Water refill stations will also be a good addition to the waste stations as that will attract more crowd to the stations – and thus, more festival goers will be more aware of the green initiatives

They were very low level of cooperativeness from food vendors kitchen waste and cooking oil collection. Even after multiple reminders and speaking in-person, they did not segregate waste and discarded their trash in the compost bins provided. This might be because managers are not passing the information to their staffs on-shift. Those who we communicated to at the briefing and through WhatsApp and phone calls are the managers. But, those who are on-ground are the staffs. Maybe we need to conduct a training session with the staffs that will be on duty, along with managers.

Recyclable, biodegradable tableware and food waste did went into the trash – which you can see from the garbage accumulated in the RORO bins for trash (near the vendor entrance) and in all the black trash bins placed all across the venue. Especially when these bins are placed much closer to or at the eating areas, festival goers tend to not bring their waste to the waste segregation stations. Removing these bins will increase the collection of recyclables, biodegradable tableware and food waste.

This can encourage festival goers to use reusable tableware instead of disposable ones.

Reusable tableware and cutleries can be returned either to them after use, or to the waste segregation station (which then washed and returned to vendors for use). This can provide additional income jobs to local community members during the festival period.

Certain waste segregation stations were super successful in getting festival goers onboard to
segregate waste, while some were not. The success pretty much depended on the location
of the tent and its visibility from eating area.

Quite a bit of cooked but unsold food were discarded by vendors, bought but not eaten food were discarded by the festival goers. Maybe we could encourage these vendors to give away the food items after closing – even if not to festival goers, these can be provided to SCV staffs and RWMF volunteers.

After RWMF 2018, we requested feedback on recycling and food waste management initiatives, volunteers’ overall experience, and suggestions to improve RWMF sustainability initiatives further.

Below are volunteers’ feedbacks on recycling, in their own words:

• Recycling tents could be more visible and obvious (more signs around SCV, etc) so people can know where to go beforehand (after eating/drinking). Could be tricky if we have to comply with specific rules stated by the festival’s board.
• A welcoming sight to start a recycling knowledge
• To promote this initiative at RWMF is certainly a great way to ensure festival-goers are aware of the importance & the efforts needed to protect our environment.
• The recycling initiative is great, we actually reduces waste like waste that goes to the landfills and also helps to save earth resources by recycling the items. The recycling initiative also create a cleaner and greener festivals.
• More awareness to the people like walking around and telling people or doing e-surveys to the visitors
• It was a really good initiative as agreed by a lot of the foreigners as well! In fact most of them were quite happy with this initiative. Some would even say thank you for your effort and most would nod with us as they walk pass the booth. The idea of runners were very effective as well as they really did help reduce the burden of the busy booth. However there are still quite a few place that doesn’t have enough/significant recycling bins as some mentioned that nearby the stage it was hard for them to recycle as they fail to locate where the recycling station and in this case our booth was. The locals were quite reluctant to recycle though, because being the typical Malaysian hence most of the time the recyclables goes into trash. Probably because they think it’s a hassle and they felt uncomfortable being ‘observed’ as we were stationed at our respective booth. They might not want to be approached by us. The idea of classification differs from what we know as well as certain items can’t be recycled due to technological constraints but it was hard to explain it to the crowd.
• Maybe we can initiate/introduce the ideas of recycling/no plastics/green initiatives practices in promoting RMWF so that the peoples have the ideas of this approach before they came to RWMF. This is to improve and to increase the self-awareness of peoples in the importance of clean environment and also the management of waste.

Below are volunteers’ feedbacks on food waste management, in their own words:

• Feed the unfortunate, if possible
• It could be more successful if the crowd are aware of it.
• The composting initiative is really great, since that it not only reduces food waste and leftover that are normally just being thrown in the bin but also make food waste being useful by making them into fertilizers.
• Wasn’t the main attraction as much as recycling. Certainly can be provided with a better spotlight.
• Composting is not really known to many people hence having this initiative at RWMF is an effective way to spread the knowledge on it to festival-goers
• Overall it’s really amazing. There were a few people who bought too much food and finish only one pack. We had to throw away all the food that were untouched and fresh. I suggest that a table aside for those “waste” for people who wants and by donation box can be setup or donate the waste to poultry farmers, another alternative to “dumpster dive”.
• Adding some information of composting process or having a prototype in compost device be it in commercial purposes or home-made purposes.

Overall Festival goers’ Feedback, in their own words

• Remind comers to bring their own food containers/ utensils/ drink container for buying food/ drink.
• To emphasize more on food waste. A lot of people bought extra food and discard untouched food.
• Put the festival programme as a phone app to reduce the amount of brochures printed & discarded.
• During the night performance, it was impossible to find a spot with cigarette smoking. There should (be) different section for smoker & non-smoker.
• Nice event in RWMF 2018.
• Great to see you here as still a lot has to be done to make such event 100% sustainable. Continue your great work.
• It would be good if we also might have an interactive learning class regarding sustainable/ conservation issues during RWMF as it is one of the big event in the country