NOOSA FOOD & WINE: Reducing Waste One Festival at a Time

Making a positive difference with compostable packaging

In most cases, large festivals and events involving food service inevitably produce significant volumes of waste — which often ends up in a landfill. But some event organisers, like Noosa Food & Wine Festival, are bucking the trend and opting for sustainable solutions.

Noosa Food & Wine Festival has teamed up with BioPak to work towards being a zero-waste event, setting the standard for the future of foodservice festivals.

How Noosa Food & Wine Festival have reduced their waste to landfill?

With a constellation of vendors and guests gathered at UNESCO biosphere reserve, the Noosa Food & Wine Festival event coordinators implemented sustainable event management practices and sought out more environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional single-use packaging.

In partnership with BioPak, Tourism Noosa, Plastic Free Noosa, the Noosa Food & Wine Festival worked together to make the event plastic-free and manage the environmental impacts associated with the event.

Part of the solution was the introduction of a mandate that all catering partners and vendors use certified compostable food packaging, all to be collected after use.

What difference does it make?

Just like Noosa Food & Wine Festival, you too can make a lasting positive impact.

A festival using 100,000 hot dog boxes, plates, cups, knives and forks in one night can make a big difference by choosing compostable cups and joining Compost Connect.

Here’s how:

• Using compostable packaging means you’ll create and offset 23 tonnes of carbon
• Saving “no” to conventional plastic packaging means you’ll avoid 7 tonnes of plastic being made and the 6,860 litres of crude oil used to make it
• And by diverting packaging and food scraps from landfill and composting it instead, you’ll create 5 tonnes of compost and avoid the creation of 12 tonnes of carbon

More information:

• Download the case study
• Learn more about Compost Connect