Zero Waste at Dingle Fest

The 2024 Dingle Food Festival is continuing on its mission to be the first Irish “Zero Landfill Waste” festival. Taking place from Friday 4th to Sunday 6th of October, the festival is expected to attract over 10,000 visitors with 150,000 food tastings on offer.

Once again this year, all festival goers are being encouraged to bring their own bowl - bear leat do babhla! For those who don’t, there will be stainless steel bowls available to rent. There will also be festival packs on sale consisting of a bamboo bowl and cutlery set. Taste trail and market outlets will only be serving food onto reusable tableware, with the main aim being to reduce the amount of disposable packaging over the weekend.

Festival Chairperson Martin Bealin highlighted the amount of waste festivals generate and the sustainable practices that the Dingle Food Festival are implementing to reduce this.

“There will be approximately 150,000 tastings happening over the weekend, so getting rid of the disposable packaging will make a huge impact…it’s a big challenge for the Dingle Food Festival community, but one we know will be embraced.”

Other sustainable practices over the weekend will include HVO generators run on ethically sourced HVO for the weekend, providing the electricity for the market stalls, and printed material moving online, with a smaller festival programme being printed. Bus Éireann and Local Link will offer more bus options to and from the peninsula over the weekend.

The festival will feature workshops on how you can practice better sustainability, including one specifically for children, delivered by Jennifer Attard of MTU on “Limiting Food Waste”.

Micro biodigester manufacturer MyGug will set up a micro biodigester to convert all the unavoidable food waste instantly into gas, which will be used to power the cookery demonstrations by local producers.