Mary got her start greening as a girl in rural Vermont where there was no garbage pick up and everything got used up, repurposed or in the direst of cases hauled to the dump. Everything recyclable was sorted out and we paid for whatever could not go somewhere else.
That carries on 40+ years later. She got her start at events in 2002, when Julia Butterfly-Hill spoke at a local festival and essentially shamed her audience and the team behind the event. She pointed out the irony of this progressive festival barely recycling and exclaimed (I paraphrase), “You’re wiping your mouths with virgin-tree napkins and your trash cans are overflowing. Shame on you, go home,; no more parties until you can treat the earth with the respect you claim to have!” Mary took the message into heart and soul and jumped into and helped speed along the fledgling event greening industry in Northern California.
Highly focused on what goes into public events and what does not have to go to the landfill, she’s got a team of 40-60 employees at any given time who are also passionate about eco-education and maximized waste diversion.
An on-going core campaign for the team is moving everyone at events past single-use plastics and toward reusable everything with a greater awareness of the preciousness of all our natural resources.
To date, they green events over 350 event dates per year all over the SF Bay Area.
Hobbies include escaping into nature, tennis, skiing, reading, dancing, playing with friends, volunteering with kids and dogs, and talking trash (or the not making of it).