Earth Guardians

Earth Guardians help us respect the Earth at InterFuse through education and opportunities for practical action.

InterFuse Recyling

Recycling conserves our limited resources, reduces the amount of CO2 we put in the air, and is an important part of Leaving No Trace.

The Earth Guardians are leading our recycling effort and they want to make it easy for you to get in on the recycling action. So, they are providing a recycling drop-off at the Earth Guardians Station. You may drop recycling off there at any time. Please be self-sufficient and place your sorted recyclables into the proper containers at the Earth Guardians Station.

The Earth Guardians welcome volunteers who will collect the recyclables to recycle in their own community after the event.

The Earth Guardians will accept the following recyclables (without food residue, please):

  • #1 & #2 plastics (Look for the little triangle with the number inside on most plastic containers.)
  • Glass (brown & green - no need to seperate)
  • Tin cans and metal bottle caps.
  • Aluminum cans, preferably crushed. Bonus points for one handed crushing.
  • Cork-Top wine bottles

The Earth Guardians can provide you with trash bags of various sizes and toughness to handle your own camp's trash collection or recycling efforts. We will also have some pill bottles and other pocket sized containers for cigarette butts.

Lost And Found

The Earth Guardians Station is also home to Lost And Found. If you find any item that appears to be separated from its owner, take it to the Earth Guardians Station. Earth Guardians have a storage area for all Found items. Valuable items such as cell phones, wallets, fire tools, etc. will be locked in a secure box until claimed. There is also a bulletin board for posting items you have lost and your preferred method of contact.

Post event, unclaimed Found items are inventoried and a list is posted online on related Yahoo groups. If you do not subscribe to any Yahoo groups, please leave your information with the Earth Guardians, so they can contact you if your item turns up. Don't lose hope. Things are often found long after the event is over.

Likewise, sometimes people find they accidentally took home an item that was not theirs and they would like to find the rightful owner. You may Contact The Event Planners to let us know, and we'll all do our best to get those things back to their original holder.

Disclaimer: Items specifically like unopened cans of beer, bacon anything, and stuffed animals will be immediately confiscated by the TLA. Items such as dirty socks, torn undies, and toothbrushes will not be inventoried and obviously discarded. After an undetermined, but reasonable amount of time and effort to match the Founds with the Losts, unclaimed items in good shape will be cleaned and donated to charity.

A Personal Note From The Earth Guardians:

Pollution: Almost everybody will be dealing with some kind of fuel sometime during InterFuse, whether camp stove fuel, fire spinning fuel, tiki torches or whatever. Please bring along some kind of metal container to place under your object when you put fuel in it to catch any spills. Some plastic containers will work, too, but you need to test it to make sure your fuel doesn't eat right through it. Also helpful will be some plain clay kitty litter to absorb any spillage - soak up the spilled fuel with the kitty liter and then put it in your trash bag to take home with you. The Earth Guardians Station will have some kitty litter available for this purpose. If your car or truck has an oil leak, please place something under the leak to keep it from going into the ground and take that something home with you.

I'm not married to these words, but that's the general idea. As a rule, it would be best if refueling were done on the road since spillage there would do the least harm. But that's not very practical.

Brandon
Earth Guardians Lead
InterFuse 2011

The Giving Tree: Gifting And Gift Recycling

Somewhere near the Earth Guardians Station grows a giving tree. Inspired by childhood diversions and the innate desire to share, the Giving Tree has become a meeting place for these ideas and promotes re-purposing of things we no longer have a use for. It's a place where you can both give and receive everything from clothing and skill toys to canned food and batteries. Leave something. Take Something.

Please Note: In the event of rain or high winds, the items will be moved to inside the Earth Guardians Shelter.

The Butt Project

Every year the Earth Guardians sponsor the Butt Project at Interfuse and we are currently asking you to to SAVE AND DONATE THOSE MINT TINS!

Have a thing for Altoids? Save those empties. Like the Green Tea Mints from Trader Joes? Save those empties.

We prefer the tins because they are cute, flat and fit well into pockets. But we also accept other very small closed containers, such as used prescition bottles (without the labels).

Handpainted/decorated ones are a BONUS if you feel like being creative! (And people are more likely to keep them.)

When you get to InterFuse, you can drop them off at the Front Gate if you are so inclined, or bring them to the Earth Guardians Station (we'll be on the far end of the main burn area).

*FD*
Earth Guardians Co-Lead
InterFuse 2011

Earth Guardians' InterFuse Tips

  • PLAN. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES put your trash bags in the neighbors' trash on your way home. We are guests in this area and want to maintain a good relationship with the neighbors. Dumping your trash in the neighborhood is very unfriendly and can endanger the existence of InterFuse and the Shriners Club Campground.
  • PREPARE. Plan your packing with trash hauling in mind. Make sure you have room for your trash. Consider using 5 gallon buckets with lids for carrying stinky wet trash in cars. You don't want to end your InterFuse experience figuring out how two bulging stinky trash bags can be squeezed into a packed-to-the-roof car for a 5 hour trip.
  • REDUCE. First before your buy something, ask yourself whether you really need it. When you do purchase supplies, buy in bulk to reduce packaging and your expenses. Strip your gear and food of all unecessary excess packaging BEFORE coming to InterFuse, to reduce your trash load. Burn non-toxic and paper trash.
  • REUSE. Reusable cups, personal water bottles/canteens, camel baks, and large refillable water containers are much easier on the environment and your trash load than disposable cups and plastic water bottles. If you're running a bar camp, consider making people be self-sufficient and bring their own cups or make nice InterFuse gift cups that people won't want to throw away. The same goes for reusable dinnerware vs. disposable dinnerware. If you must use disposable dishes, use paper products that you can burn to reduce your trash load.
  • RECYCLE. Check out the items above that the Earth Guardians will take for recycling. You can further reduce your trash by keeping these items seperate from your trash and giving them to the Earth Guardians. Do NOT throw metal and glass into fire circles. The Leisure Army will come beat you with their shovels and full cans of warm PBR. You will feel shame.
  • When planning the drinks you're going to bring, please remember: cans are better than bottles. Cans can be crushed to take up less space in your recycling bag and they weigh far less than bottles when empty. Also, bottles can break. Broken glass is a real danger and an accident waiting to happen. Kegs are even better for beer as they are reusable.
  • Never let your trash hit the ground.
  • Clean up your camp throughout the event, so there's not a huge mess to clean up when you're tired and want to go home. Make yourself the Earth Guardian for your camp and lead your campmates in camp LNT efforts.
  • Use tarps and large pieces of carpet or rug as ground cover in common areas of your Theme Camp. Roll it up carefully after InterFuse to catch all of the tiny MOOP in one fell swoop.
  • Did you know that bottles, bottle caps, and cigarette butts are the most common MOOP found? Bring portable containers to put your butts in, like empty prescription bottles, Altoid tins, or in an emergency, empty beer bottles. Drop your bottle caps in your pocket for recycling later. Empty glass and plastic bottles should be taken back to the recycling bag at your camp or the Earth Guardians Station.
  • Think about your constumes as you create them. You want to avoid costumes with loose things attached to them like boa feathers. You don't want your fabulous costume to be a walking MOOP machine! Leave your feather boa at home and bring fur boas instead!
  • Do not discharge wastes, pesticides, herbicides or other agents to repel insects or kill noxious weeds. The only exception is trace run off from your body of insect repellents. Consider buying organic bug repellents usually sold at your local health food store.
  • If it didn't come from your body, don't put it in the potty. Anything but 1 ply toilet paper and body fluids will clog the machine that cleans out the porta potties.
  • After the event we must return the land to it's original condition. So do not discard anything that does not occur naturally in the Ozarks, including biodegradable trash like fruit rinds.
  • Consider using rechargeable batteries, battery powered glowsticks, and LED rope or Christmas lights to sustainably light up your experience and save energy so you can have a smaller power source.
  • For large projects, look into local places that recover and resell building supplies. The InterFuse effigy uses some recovered building supplies. Freecycle.org is also a great resource since it will save you money and ensures that all types of things are reused.
  • Consider purchasing carbon offsets to cover the carbon you produce travelling to InterFuse. You can easily calculate your carbon footprint and purchase offsets cheaply and quickly online through a variety of companies.

Questions? Want To Volunteer?

Any questions about the Earth Guardians can be sent to The Event Planners. If you're interested in volunteering with the Earth Guardians or the Earth Guardian Special Forces, please visit the Volunteer page (there's a form at the bottom).


"To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power:
the power of art over trash,
the triumph of magic over the brute."

— Vladimir Nabokov