Skill­ful and Effi­cient Recy­cling

Caracara Collective’s devel­op­ment inno­va­tions in waste man­age­ment and uti­liza­tion of waste as con­struc­tion mate­r­i­al at a fes­ti­val

Caracara Col­lec­tive designed inno­v­a­tive waste sep­a­ra­tion points at the Sol­stice Fes­ti­val and reprocessed waste as region­al art for exam­ple. In 2023, the waste man­age­ment took an even larg­er step towards an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly future.

Inno­va­tion Tri­al

The Sol­stice Fes­ti­val sought an effi­cient way for waste sep­a­ra­tion and recy­cling. In 2022, the exper­i­men­tal sus­tain­able solu­tion design stu­dio Caracara Col­lec­tive designed sus­tain­able and easy to use waste sep­a­ra­tion points for the fes­ti­val that ran­dom­ly award­ed users with drink tokens. The styl­ish, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry waste sep­a­ra­tion points were entire­ly con­struct­ed with recy­cled mate­r­i­al in coop­er­a­tion with Kuusamo’s Waste Trans­fer Sta­tion among oth­er oper­a­tors.

On top of the waste bins, there were three par­tic­i­pa­to­ry ash­trays at the fes­ti­val that atten­dees could use to vote for their favorite music genre by putting their cig­a­rette butt into the cor­re­spond­ing com­part­ment. Before the fes­ti­val, about 500 recy­cled film roll tubs (about 3 kg of plas­tic) were col­lect­ed from Helsinki’s pho­tog­ra­phy stores that were dis­trib­uted to the fes­ti­val atten­dees to be used as portable ash­trays.

In the fol­low-up tri­al in 2023, the goal was to devel­op the festival’s waste man­age­ment com­pre­hen­sive­ly towards the imple­men­ta­tion of the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my plan. The recy­cling plans were extend­ed to span over the waste caused by fes­ti­val con­struc­tion as well as restau­rant and serv­ing areas’ waste sep­a­ra­tion and recy­cling. On top of this, the tri­al focused on the uti­liza­tion of bio­plas­tic waste with the use of plas­tic extru­sion.

Results

All waste col­lect­ed in waste bins dur­ing the 2022 fes­ti­val was weighed. 59 kg of waste was col­lect­ed and the largest por­tion (54,7 %) end­ed up as mixed waste. Even though many atten­dees did not recy­cle at all, the recy­cling bins worked well: 80 % of their con­tents had been recy­cled cor­rect­ly. The tokens also moti­vat­ed peo­ple to sep­a­rate waste even though they caused unnec­es­sary use of the waste bins in hope of receiv­ing a token. The ash­trays also worked quite well but the tester admit­ted that their place­ment requires devel­op­ment. A total of 635 kg of vir­gin raw mate­r­i­al was saved with the sep­a­ra­tion points built out of recy­cled mate­r­i­al.

For bind­ing organ­ic waste such as paper, saw dust and berry skins, Caracara Col­lec­tive devel­oped a nat­ur­al glue. The mate­ri­als can be used to cre­ate tem­po­rary fes­ti­val solu­tions that can be decom­posed into soil or can be reprocessed into new mate­ri­als after the fes­ti­val.

A new plas­tic extru­sion device was devel­oped for the uti­liza­tion of plas­tic that melts and molds plas­tic and bio­plas­tic into new prod­ucts. Dif­fer­ent sam­ples were pro­duced out of bio­plas­tic col­lect­ed from the fes­ti­val and from plas­tic waste col­lect­ed from oth­er oper­a­tors. At the same time, it was stud­ied how nat­ur­al pig­ments, such as berry waste, can be mixed with mate­ri­als to cre­ate even more impres­sive recy­cled prod­ucts.

Three waste sep­a­ra­tion points were con­struct­ed in the fes­ti­val area in order to recy­cle the waste emerg­ing due to fes­ti­val build­ing and the waste was recy­cled effi­cient­ly because almost all fes­ti­val struc­tures, apart from the art pro­gramme, were re-used from last year and the con­struc­tion work­ers were briefed about recy­cling. The sep­a­ra­tion points of the atten­dees were re-used from last year and a fifth com­part­ment for cans and glass bot­tles was added to them. The par­tic­i­pa­to­ry token mech­a­nisms were removed from the points because though they were fun and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, they did not advance recy­cling effi­cien­cy. Also, the laser-cut wood­en signs at sep­a­ra­tion points encour­aged recy­cling and last year’s film roll tub ash­trays were re-used by the fes­ti­val atten­dees.

For the final waste sep­a­ra­tion Caracara Col­lec­tive pro­duced a waste sep­a­ra­tion point where all waste bag con­tents were sep­a­rat­ed into the cor­rect com­part­ments: plas­tic, paper, card­board, met­al, deposit, biowaste, dan­ger­ous waste and impure wood waste. Wet and food-stained waste were recy­cled as mixed waste. The vol­ume of fes­ti­val waste was mea­sured to help future waste man­age­ment plans. Bio­plas­tic mugs and bagasse food con­tain­ers were sep­a­rate­ly col­lect­ed for preser­va­tion.

With the col­lect­ed amount of plas­tic waste, one could pro­duce approx­i­mate­ly 150–280 vinyl records or 160–380 T‑shirts. A record press­ing com­pa­ny in Helsin­ki, Puris­ta­mo, expressed inter­est in pos­si­ble coop­er­a­tion in pro­duc­ing vinyl records from the bio­plas­tic. The bagasse pro­duced for the fes­ti­val can be, for exam­ple, re-processed by boil­ing and grind­ing into a mold­able mass or can be uti­lized as sub­strate for myceli­um or edi­ble mush­rooms. All oth­er waste was deliv­ered to Las­si­la & Tikano­ja who will process it into, for exam­ple, bio­gas for heat and elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion as well as trans­port fuel, new plas­tic, new card­board, par­ti­cle boards and new met­al prod­ucts.

In 2023, Caracara Col­lec­tive want­ed to cre­ate an art­work out of bio­plas­tic as an exam­ple of re-uti­liza­tion of fes­ti­val waste. The sam­ples cre­at­ed with last year’s plas­tic extru­sion device were too frag­ile and the process would have required too much ener­gy and time. With the new pro­duc­tion method, it was pos­si­ble to cre­ate plates of high­er qual­i­ty and col­or effects quick­er. The final con­cept con­sist­ed of four square mod­ules where bio­plas­tic sheets were attached to a wood­en frame. The festival’s tra­di­tion­al Mid­sum­mer pole was dec­o­rat­ed with them. The coop­er­a­tion with Kuusamo’s Waste Trans­fer Sta­tion that begun in 2022 con­tin­ued in 2023 when the cho­sen cre­ator of the main art­work of the Sol­stice Fes­ti­val, Anas­ta­sia Sviri­denko, col­lect­ed all mate­ri­als for her art from the Waste Trans­fer Sta­tion.

Alto­geth­er in 2023, the tri­al suc­ceed­ed in devel­op­ing a more effi­cient waste man­age­ment sys­tem all the way from waste col­lec­tion to waste sep­a­ra­tion and pro­cess­ing. The more thor­ough inter­nal orga­ni­za­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pared to last year helped with recy­cling of con­struc­tion waste as well.

Thanks to the care­ful waste sep­a­ra­tion, over 80 % of the fes­ti­val waste end­ed up recy­cled or re-used. Dur­ing the tri­al, Caracara Col­lec­tive also man­aged to dri­ve their mate­r­i­al tri­als for­ward and build up their mate­r­i­al bank which makes the cre­ation of even more impres­sive recy­cling art­works pos­si­ble next year.

Briefly

• The tri­al was orga­nized by Caracara Col­lec­tive.
• The event was the elec­tron­ic music fes­ti­val Sol­stice in Ruka, Kuusamo, in 2022 and 2023. The fes­ti­val is held at Mid­sum­mer.
• The goal of the tri­al was to increase the event’s recy­cling rate and re-use the waste inno­v­a­tive­ly as art, fur­ni­ture and in oth­er uses. The con­struc­tion of the inno­va­tions, such as the waste sep­a­ra­tion points, out of recy­cled mate­r­i­al was impor­tant.