Five ways Seattle Pride can become more environmentally responsible in 2018

The Seat­tle Pride Parade, Pride­Fest, and asso­ci­at­ed Pride events are a great Emer­ald City insti­tu­tion bring­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple togeth­er to cel­e­brate diver­si­ty, inclu­sion, and love each and every summer.

While many aspects of Pride are already great and don’t need chang­ing, there’s one area in par­tic­u­lar where we feel there’s a lot of room for improve­ment, and that is envi­ron­men­tal respon­si­bil­i­ty. Pride cur­rent­ly gen­er­ates a lot of trash and air pol­lu­tion, and we’d like to see orga­niz­ers pur­sue strate­gies that would reduce emis­sions and the vol­ume of mate­r­i­al being sent to landfills.

Here are five ways Seat­tle Pride can become more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly in 2018:

1. Cre­ate plac­ards for busi­ness­es along the route to put up request­ing that peo­ple refrain from smok­ing and lit­ter­ing. There are too many Pride atten­dees who think it’­so okay to light up in the mid­dle of a crowd or toss their unwant­ed swag and plas­tic water bot­tles into the street. Sig­nage could help dis­cour­age this behav­ior, espe­cial­ly if accom­pa­nied by reg­u­lar announce­ments from review­ing stands and ads on social media fea­tur­ing respect­ed region­al icons like Mack­le­more, Felix Her­nan­dez, or Rick Steves.
2. Request that orga­ni­za­tions sub­mit­ting entries to the parade use elec­tric vehi­cles and solar gen­er­a­tors. Inter­nal com­bus­tion engines gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant amounts of air pol­lu­tion (as well as some noise pol­lu­tion). Elec­tric vehi­cles and solar gen­er­a­tors, on the oth­er hand, are qui­et and don’t have tailpipes emit­ting car­bon monox­ide and oth­er nox­ious gas­es. The air qual­i­ty at the event would be improved if the burn­ing of fos­sil fuels was min­i­mized. (Cleanup crews should use elec­tric blow­ers, too.)
3. Pro­vide clear­ly-marked water sta­tions where parade­go­ers can eas­i­ly get reusable water bot­tles refilled. I brought my Kleen Kan­teen and sipped from it all after­noon, but with the excep­tion of the vol­un­teer-oper­at­ed water sta­tion out­side of First Unit­ed Methodist Church at the end of the route, I did­n’t see any place where I could get it refilled. Dis­pos­able plas­tic water bot­tles are extreme­ly waste­ful and we need to cut down on their use. If water sta­tions are made avail­able and peo­ple know about them, they will be more inclined to bring their reusable bot­tles. Platy­pus-style water pouch­es pro­vid­ed by a spon­sor could be giv­en away at these sta­tions too.
4. Enforce the rule against toss­ing can­dy, trin­kets, con­fet­ti, or any­thing else — espe­cial­ly from mov­ing vehi­cles. The guide­lines for the Pride Parade already say quite explic­it­ly that “noth­ing may be thrown or tossed by your con­tin­gent (this includes small can­dies, trin­kets, etc).” Any mate­ri­als for dis­tri­b­u­tion are sup­posed to be hand­ed out direct­ly to parade spec­ta­tors. It’s a sen­si­ble restric­tion. Sad­ly, this rule is flout­ed every year. With bet­ter edu­ca­tion and robust enforce­ment, we’d have an event that would end with less trash in the street. And the event would be safer, too.
5. Pro­vide recy­cling and com­post­ing recep­ta­cles along the parade route and at all Pride events so that few­er items go to the land­fill. Clear and sim­ple instruc­tions must be post­ed next to all recep­ta­cles, or else there’s not much chance of them being used prop­er­ly. Hav­ing vol­un­teers on hand to pro­vide guid­ance on recep­ta­cle use would be ide­al. Some­times peo­ple just need to know what to put into what container.

And final­ly: Pride should assem­ble a “Green Team” of vol­un­teers ded­i­cat­ed to imple­ment­ing the above strate­gies and addi­tion­al ideas that will make Pride a more envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble insti­tu­tion. Clean­li­ness and pub­lic health need to be empha­sized the way safe­ty has been. That’s why it would make sense to put togeth­er an enthu­si­as­tic crew of peo­ple focused specif­i­cal­ly on reducing/eliminating waste and pol­lu­tion. Peo­ple’s behav­ior can be changed — but it takes work.