It’s a messy business, but thanks to the efforts of the Gilroy High School wrestling and basketball teams, along with first-year volunteers New Hope Community Church, those overseeing one of the Garlic Festival’s grittiest jobs made trash patrol operate like a well-oiled machine.
Nearly 2,000 bins had to be emptied throughout the park during the three-day 35th annual event last weekend, requiring dozens of volunteers who committed an entire week to keeping all of Christmas Hill Park clean.
Just half of the 2,000 bins were specifically for trash. Another 800 were recycling and composting.
According to Phil Couchee, general manager at Recology, 30 percent of an estimated 87 tons of waste was diverted, thanks to volunteer recycling efforts.
That doesn’t include California Redemption Value items, which were sorted out, Couchee added.
Couchee said he was pleased with the Garlic Festival organizers’ commitment to reducing the amount of waste that enters landfills.
“They really work hard and do a good job in a difficult situation,” Couchee said. “They rely on the public to do the right thing. Sometimes it’s difficult in a setting like that, getting folks to put things in the right bin.”
Though the festival’s composting option is relatively new for the general public, it has been an option with the festival’s food vendors for nearly 10 years, according to Julie Alter, Wastezero specialist with Recology South Valley.
Brian Bowe, the Garlic Festival’s executive director, said the general public has been able to access to the compost bins since 2010.
The compost bins “work really well because the public, for the most part, are really conditioned or accustomed to do that, whether at home or at work,” Bowe continued. “People seem cooperative and receptive to it and appreciate that we offer it.”
Still, there is some education that is required as people are still accustomed to throwing their trash in waste bins.
But the word is spreading slowly, said Ryan MacPhail, the refuse committee chair.
“People just see the cardboard cans and dump everything in there because it’s what they’re familiar with,” MacPhail said.
In an effort to maximize the amount of material that is repurposed or reused, Alter helped sort through the waste for what is recyclable or compostable.
“The real challenge is keeping recycling away from food waste or other containments,” Couchee explained.
The Volunteers
For all the planning that goes on with the festival’s trash removal, it comes down to bodies on the ground emptying each bin as it fills up.
That job is left to people like the wrestling team or the basketball team from Gilroy High School which, for most of the festival’s storied history, has brought athletes out to help take out the trash.
Greg Varela, the GHS wrestling coach, has worked more than 20 Garlic Festivals. He took five years off while attending college.
He said the Garlic Festival is the biggest fundraiser for the wrestling team, accounting for roughly half of the team’s budget for tournaments and equipment.
Varela said the job isn’t pleasant, but it serves a huge purpose.
“We try to keep the park clean for the public. If there’s a dirty park, people will remember that,” Varela said. “It doesn’t matter how good the event was, or how good the food was or the entertainment, if the park is dirty, that’s all people remember.”
The wrestlers themselves filled 714 shifts with 34 volunteers. That doesn’t count the other groups, including the GHS basketball team or the New Hope Community Church members.
Members of the team commented that the work was hard, but said they recognized the benefits for them and the festival.
The crowds were up from last year, Bowe said, and as a result there was more to collect.
The wrestlers said Friday was busier than normal, but Saturday was more hectic than the day before.
This year, organizers instituted a new rule that kept trash collecting carts out of the grassy areas where most of the festival crowd was.
This meant Varela had to park his cart along roadways and have the athletes haul the trash back from the collection points.
During the lunch rush Saturday, bins in the children’s area were overflowing with trash and recyclable material. Even with six trash cans with wheels, the boys still needed help bringing all the trash back across the park.
Bowe said Tuesday this policy made it hard to keep up with the volume of waste needed to be collected, and he and some other directors had to go out and pick up garbage themselves.
Sunday, however, Bowe said the rule was changed to allow the carts back out on the grassy areas to expedite the cleanup process.
“It’s a really delicate balance, because one of the tough things about the festival has, or any event, is to minimize the vehicle traffic same space as attendees,” Bowe said.
Meanwhile, the wrestlers, basketball players and church volunteers made their rounds, responding to emergency calls for cleanups and hauling load after load of trash back to the collection area.
Some of the wrestlers battled bees, while others dealt with the occasional rude festival-goer who made a spectacle of throwing out a beer cup.
At the end of each festival day, when the crowds went home, it was the Gilroy Gators Swimmers’ turn to fan out across the park with their parents to clean up every bit of trash left behind.
