Greening Efforts

It isn’t easy being green, but North America’s largest dragon boat festival works extremely hard each year to help preserve the natural setting of Mooney’s Bay Park.

The Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival has been at the forefront of environmental leadership in our community.

In 2005, the Festival became the first carbon neutral festival in North America.  Partnering with Tree Canada and Rideau Valley Conservation Foundation to plant 2,287 trees, absorbing 364 tonnes of carbon.

In 2007, the Festival initiated a full recycling program.

In 2010, the Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival became the first Ecologo Certified festival in the world under its standards for Events. EcoLogo provides assurance that an event bearing its certification mark meets stringent standards of environmental leadership.  The festival continues to meet the Program’s strict criteria in a variety of categories including material, waste, energy, and transportation.

Here are some of the Festivals greening initiatives past and present: 

• dedicated Festival Green Team that helps keep the site clean.
• providing waste, recycling and compost stations for festival-goers;
• providing a hydration station, which allows people to re-fill personal water bottles; to-date 29,827 plastic bottles diverted from local landfills.
• providing a secured bike parking area; 2,500+ bikes parked each year in free supervised bike parking area that helps promote green transportation.
• providing free shuttle services from around the City to Mooney’s Bay Park;
• using 100% compostable cups made from 100% renewable resources;
• using cupsuckers for the efficient storage and recycling of cups.