Summer Solstice Festival Goes Green

By Natalie West

June 19, 2009

"It's not a shopping festival," said Laureen Blakemore. "I call it a community party."

That party will commence this Saturday when the community of Blacksburg celebrates its second annual Summer Solstice Festival from noon to midnight.

This year the festival will move towards being a pure green event. There will be recycling and sustainability displays and food vendors located in the Tech Bookstore parking lot.  All materials for the festival have been printed on recycled paper as well.

Blakemore, the event director, said there will be lots of activities from a dunking booth and football toss games to a moon bounce and a toddler playground. The festival will also feature live music from Hope Hop, Sol Creech, the PanJammers Steel Band, and The Prisoners.

Festival goers can experience different kinds of dances including belly dancing, swing dancing, hoop dancing, and hula demos. Awful Arthur's will sponsor an oyster-slurping contest and there will be a Sand Olympics including tug-o-war, limbo and sumo wrestling at Cabo Fish Taco.

A 5-K run will take place at 8:30 p.m. and will be the only night-time run in the area. Blakemore said last year there were about 200 runners involved and they enjoyed wearing fluorescent colors and carrying glow sticks.

"The money raised through admissions will go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the Blacksburg High School track team for helping out running it," said Blakemore.

Blakemore said one of the highlights to this year's festival will be the dog parade.  Last year there were about 100 dogs involved and most dressed up in costumes. Even more are expected this year.  The dog parade will hold a best costume contest which is sponsored by NRV Varmints. 

A festival participant for NRV Varmints said they will be stationed behind Cabo Fish Taco and will have a booth set up to register if interested.

There will be a Food Landscape Contest which is a cooking contest that will have two categories. One will be the best food beach scenes where you make edible beach like foods, the other will be the best green food theme to spread the idea of being green.

Blakemore said it will be less about tasting and more about creativity and imagination.

The prize will include money and the winner will choose how they want the money to be put back into the community.

Blakemore said this year the outdoor beer garden will be a big hit. It's located in Kent Square parking area and there will be a tiki Bar sponsored by Le Clair Ryan and Comcast Spotlight that will sell beer, wine, and sodas next to the stage.

You will also be able to pedal power to make your own smoothie. One of the vendors will have a stationary bike that's pedals will be hooked up to a power wheel that powers the blender.  Bike Barns and Eats will provide organic fruit and products.

Blakemore said one of the elements of the Solstice Festival is to focus on waste control and educating the public on which trash goes in which trash can.

The Poplar Manor Enterprises, PME LLC, is providing Food Waste Composting to the festival.  Owner Mindy Farley said the company is certified under category 3 and are the second business in Virginia to have this.

"It's pretty cool how we've been able to help out," said Farley. "Hopefully with us being there, whatever we capture and bring back here will go towards Blacksburg recycling rate."

With this permit, anything they take in counts towards recycling.  PME, LLC takes in over 11,000 tons per year and it takes about 8 to 12 months for food waste to break down.

"There will be a booth set up and any food waste that is normally going into a normal trash can that would go into a landfill, will go to us and bring it back to compost and the money will go back to Blacksburg," said Farley.

"It will be interesting to see how much less trash people throw away and we really want people to see how much less we can be throwing away," said Blakemore.