Get involved in the Community Center’s Festival of Sustainability 2022

[Sybe]

Hello everyone,

With planes emitting carbon emissions, fuel-burning rental cars, and large quantities of plastic water bottles left behind by guests – travelling can leave a big footprint on the planet but sustainable tourism is ever-growing.

As more travellers are looking for eco-friendly holidays, more hosts are adopting eco-friendly practices, to reduce their footprint, so that guests can still enjoy trotting the world with less of an environmental impact. With a desire to help the planet, through our own individual action, we can make an impact on a global scale.

As part of Sustainability Month at Airbnb, we are launching our first ever Festival of Sustainability!

From April 22nd to April 29th, the festival will be held here in the CC. It will be entirely online, full of great topics, collaboration, and fun conversation. 

We do need your help, though, so we would like to invite you to get involved.

Here are two ways:

1. Community Photo Collage:

Snap a selfie of yourself somewhere green. Perhaps in the favourite part of your garden, next to the tomato plants in your greenhouse, with the tree you planted last spring, at your local botanical garden, with the houseplant you named Susan, or even from that trip you took to the Amazon where that monkey climbed your back. The possibilities for “green” photo opportunities are endless!

We will stitch all the images together to make our very own community collage that we will share on the first day of the festival as a featured post on Earth Day. 

 How this works: 

• Take a selfie of yourself somewhere green
• Landscape or portrait
• Clear, quality photos using your smartphone (or other device if you prefer)
• Ideal image formats: JPEG or PNG
• Send your submissions to airbnb-cc@airbnb.com to be included in the grand reveal on Earth Day or post it below.

1. Create a detailed topic all sustainability:

If you would like to create a topic to be included in the week, please comment below or contact me directly to discuss this further. We also have topics we can suggest.

We are asking for a maximum of 750 words (if you can!), which we will translate into all the languages we support here on the CC to share during the Festival. 

We hope that this festival inspires you to make at least one change to be more sustainable. Let’s all share and learn from each other during the Festival of Sustainability!

Thanks so much,

**Deadline for submissions is Friday Apr 14, 2022 

*Disclaimer 

By submitting your image to the email address above, you authorize Airbnb to use your media, your first name, profile photo, and city and country of residence in marketing materials to promote Airbnb.

Throwing in some mentions of Hosts I know love sustainable hosting @Anna1403 , @Veronica-Of-Excel-Proper0 , @Clara116, @Kitty-and-Creek0, @Lawrene0, @Delphine348 

[Kitty-and-Creek0]

@Sybe 

I love this!

[Huma0]

@Sybe 

This is an old thread that I posted a couple of years ago because of the circumstances at the time with all the COVID panic stockpiling, but I think a lot of it could still be relevant or, if not, it could be updated:

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Now-is-a-good-time-to-think-about-food-waste/m-p/1264722

[Stephanie]

@Huma0 I LOVEEEE that thread, it has such wealth of knowledge and tips. Excellent idea!

[Kitty-and-Creek0]

@Sybe @Huma0

Thanks @Huma0 for reviving this topic. California now mandates composting and food service folks are creating new ways to deal with it. The big challenge is for lodging and food service outside of the areas where trash collection is available. Nonetheless, it is a terrific new rule! 

[Huma0]

@Kitty-and-Creek0 

So is it still mandatory in areas where collection is not available, i.e. do you have to compost it yourself in those areas? I can see how this could be tricky for hosts that do not live on site.

Luckily, where I live, the Council collects food waste on a weekly basis. I have found that the majority of my guests are very good about composting food scraps (better than they are at the regular recycling).

My only complaint in that area is that some of them throw away an extraordinary amount of food. I had two guys stay a couple of months ago who bought an insane amount of food and every day would fill the caddy at least once, or often twice. When they left, they had so much unused food, I guess they gave up after filling two caddy loads and threw the rest (much of it still in unopened packaging) straight into the regular trash. They filled an entire 50 litre bin. I am not joking. It almost made me weep. Strangely enough, these guys actually thought of themselves as environmentally conscious! 

[Kitty-and-Creek0]

@Huma0 

Most people here have been composting everything for most of our lives, and recycling whatever could not be composted or re-used until worn out enough to recycle. My mother told me that when she was a child, there were recycling facilities in public parks, where people would place their items in the various proper receptacles. She would be 100 years old this year. 

The mere idea of not reusing or recycling just does not make sense. The local solid waste & recycling center has it all organized. We haul all our recycling and trash there, regularly, anyway. 

We are personally in a location where there is no trash pickup, which is common here in this rural region. Composting protein needs to be done in a bear proof manner, plant material in an outdoor bin or pile works well. Some people dig a pit and when filled, they dig another. We also have a beautiful worm based compost structure in our barn with chambers divided with wire and a reservoir below for collecting the liquid gold fertilizer. The top opens for loading and the front doors  also open to shovel the compost for adding to the garden to nourish the soil.  It is all possible, and if well thought out, it works well. 

The firebreak work we continually do yields a lot of firewood which we give away, as we do not burn wood here. Also we chip smaller stuff, and have a brush pile away from the house where it all breaks down to nourish the soil there. Again, well thought out, works!

[Huma0]

@Kitty-and-Creek0 

Good to hear that composting and recycling are simply a way of life in your neck of the woods.

It is definitely starting to become more common here but how au fait guests are with recycling really depends on where they come from and, even if they come from somewhere where it is the norm, they can still find it confusing as it's done differently in different places.

With the food waste, guests get their heads around it pretty quickly, as it's not that complicated, but there is a difference between composting scraps, used tea bags, egg shells etc. and buying/cooking too much and chucking loads of food away. We have a big problem with that in the UK. Our supermarkets are relatively cheap compared to some other living costs (although of course, prices are going up for everything lately) and even take away deliveries can be inexpensive.

American guests in particular seem to go a bit nuts when they see the prices in the supermarkets here (especially Lidl or Aldi) and buy everything in sight, which is interesting as, when I first visited the US with my family when I was a teenager, we couldn't believe how cheap food was over there, so I guess things have changed...

As for doing my own composting, as I mentioned on that other thread, I don't seem to have much luck with it, which I am guessing is due to lack of sunshine/heat in my garden. My mother has a sunny garden and manages to get plenty of compost from her bin.

[Kitty-and-Creek0]

@Huma0 

Compost done properly creates its own heat, which can be considerable. Perhaps a different setup would work better for you in your location?

[Huma0]

@Kitty-and-Creek0 

Yes, perhaps. I went for style over substance I guess. My composter is very pretty (looks like a beehive) but nothing seems to break down in it, even though I have followed all the usual advice, tried the accelerators etc. Once the Council introduced their food waste scheme, I gave up on the home composting and just put everything in the the bin the Council collects weekly. The advantage of that is that you can put any type of food waste in, including cooked food and even meat/fish, whereas I was always told not to do that with the home composter (definitely don't want to be attracting rats and foxes).

[Aysın0]

Dünyada o  kadar aç insan varken bu yiyeceklerin çöpe gitmesi ne kadar üzücü bunu duymak beni inanılmaz derecede üzüyor.

Ben şahsen, konuklarım Buzdolabında yiyecek paketli kullanım süresi geçmemiş bir gıda bırakırlarsa onları çöpe atmıyorum;onları ihtiyacı olan fakir insanlara veriyorum yada sokak hayvanlarına veriyorum bu beni mutlu ediyor.

[Kitty-and-Creek0]

https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/california-mandated-composting-how-will-it-work-in-la-and...

[Anna1403]

What a wonderful idea - is this something being linked and shared with the Community Leaders team too do you know?? @Sybe @Stephanie 

[Stephanie]

Hi @Anna1403 - hopefully, we've started talking with them on this. Always more than happy to share across our various communities 🙂

[Anna1403]

Fantastic! 👍 🤗