Greening The Festival

Help us be GREEN at the 2025 Festival!

Email ChainofParks@LeMoyne.org to see how you can get involved. 

More 2025 info will be available in February!  Follow us on social media for the latest updates. 

The Chain of Parks Art Festival Going Green initiative continues in its 8th year in partnership with Sustainable Tallahassee and Rags2Bags. Sustainable Tallahassee is a non-profit organization with a mission to accelerate our community’s transition to environmental sustainability through community engagement and education.

To help with this educational effort, the Festival has also joined forces with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection working to protect the natural resources of our beloved sunshine state. Visit their booths in our Community Corner to learn about living a more sustainable life! Don’t forget to stop by to see the Electric Cars on display on Tunnicliff Lane (N Gadsden St.).

The Festival is building on these greening efforts by working to reduce waste generated by the event. Festival volunteers collect donations of leftover food from our food vendors to feed folks at the Joseph House, and Treehouse Permaculture collects compostable items to help reduce food waste in our landfills. You can help by filling your reusable water bottle at the City of Tallahassee’s Water Filling Station in our main Food Court instead of adding more plastic bottles to the waste stream.

Greening the Festival is an effort to reduce waste from the festival going to the landfill, reduce food waste from food vendors, and offer information about use and disposal choices related to reducing waste, making the festival a more sustainable, green event.

2023 Greening Efforts:

  • We worked with Compost Community to collect our food waste from the VIP and Behind the Scenes areas.
  • Food vendors donated their leftovers to Food Not Bombs at the end of each day.
  • The City’s Waterwagon was available, don’t forget your reusable water bottle next year!
  • Visitors stopped by the Rags2Bags booth to get their free reusable tote to carry all of their new purchases.
  • Sustainable Tallahassee had 3 Community Partner booths with greening information and an EV car display.

2022 Project:

The 2022 Chain of Parks Art Festival, in partnership with the City of Tallahassee’s TAPP program, commissioned 8 artists to use their artistic talents to decorate repurposed rain barrels for a public art project in downtown Tallahassee! These painted rain barrels were on display for the month of April, leading up to the Festival weekend, April 23 & 24, 2022 and were auctioned off at the festival as a fundraiser for LeMoyne Arts.

Participating Artists: 

Dan Taylor, Gena McDaniel, Quia Atkinson, Lakey Love, Honey Hilliard, Pattie Maney, Marcia Mcauliffe, and Caroline Manuel. 

Chain of Parks and Sustainable
Tallahassee recognized for Going Green

ReThink Energy Florida:  Kelly Dozier, Festival Chair, was the 2016 Energy Innovator award winner for her leadership in greening the festival.

Recycle Florida Today:  Sustainable Tallahassee was the 2017 Environmental Sustainability award winner for their efforts with greening events, especially Chain of Parks Art Festival.

Sustainable Florida:  Sustainable Tallahassee and Chain of Parks were together finalists in the 2016 Best Practice Awards for their partnership with greening the festival.

The Chain of Parks Art Festival was recognized by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for our recycling efforts! The festival’s recycling rate for the 2018 festival was 72.06%! Thank you Sustainable Tallahassee for being a partner with our festival to help us go green!

How can you help?

Dispose of your food and beverage containers in the recycling bins clearly marked for recyclables.

Bring a refillable water bottle to the festival and refill it at the City of Tallahassee free water refill station, saving you from having to purchase bottled water.

Visit The Village to learn more.  Sustainable Tallahassee has five Community Partner booths with interactive activities and free giveaways.

Recycled Content Award

The Festival awards a $300 cash prize, sponsored by Sustainable Tallahassee, to an exhibiting artist for a singular piece of original work, created using at least 75% post-consumer use/recycled/re-used materials.

The intention is to recognize the potential green use of thrown away materials to create fine art.  Review Award Criteria

Thank you for partnering for a greener festival!

Bringing Sustainable Tallahassee, Green Party Events and the City of Tallahassee to promote and assist our eco-friendly efforts at the festival has been a fun learning experience that we hope will grow to benefit the entire community. We are very grateful to our partners in this effort.

-Kelly S. Dozier, Festival Chair