Question: What separates garbage from recyclable materials? Answer: The Fayette County Green Advisory Team (GREAT), a group of concerned citizens who would like to see a more sustainable West Virginia economically, environmentally, and socially. And what better place to spread that message than Bridge Day?

GREAT is a relatively young organization; we’ve been around since 2005. With our new non-profit status we’ll be making some big moves in the years to come, which is right where Bridge Day comes in.

We’re going to do all we can to lower the environmental impact of West Virginia’s biggest one day festival, because 80,00 people are expected to walk across the New River Gorge Bridge for the 30th anniversary of Bridge Day. All that traffic creates a lot of garbage.

How much? WV Department of Highways places 103 trash cans along the bridge and has 25 WV Department of Highways employees that continually empty the cans of everything that Bridge Day goers will be throwing away during the 6 hour celebration, but all that trash doesn’t go away. After the Bridge Day celebration that garbage is loaded into trucks and hauled over to Raleigh County to be buried in the landfill. Last year we generated over 6 tons of waste in 6 hours.

To us, it makes sense to get all of the aluminum, paper, and plastic out of those 6 tons of trash and turned into some income for West Virginia. GREAT has requested funding for 103 recycling bins for Bridge Day 2010, but for this year’s events we’re scrounging up all the recycling bins and volunteers we can find.

It’s gonna be a strong willed, grass roots, down and dirty effort, and it won’t be easy (and when I say “down and dirty”, I mean it). But it will be worth it…

O.K., hold your nose- this is what we’re going to do:

In order to better the Bridge Day Recycling Project for 2010, the Green Advisory Team will be picking through 30 bags of Bridge Day Trash in order see what the Bridge Day waste stream looks like. Basically we’re gonna see exactly what festival goers are throwing away.

We understand if no one wants to volunteer for this part of our recycling project, and that’s fine because we will also have a GREAT informational booth that will need a few folks willing to spread the word about Waste Reduction, Energy Efficiency, and Water Conservation.