As the music dies down, and attendees file out of the Lakefill on Dillo Day, plastic bottles and cans litter the ground and overflow trash cans. Just west of campus, it’s a similar sight: empty gallon jugs and abandoned accessories serve as remains of the student-led festivities that morning. 

Despite the large quantity of waste produced on the day of Northwestern’s student-run music festival, University organizations and departments take preventative and post-Dillo measures to minimize waste both on and off campus.

Julie Cahillane, associate director of sustainability at sustainNU, wrote in a statement to The Daily that “the first step” toward an eco-friendly Dillo Day is encouraging people to consider how to avoid waste, from reusable or recyclable food and drink materials to fashion. sustainNU works with Mayfest Productions to create pre-Dillo marketing that promotes reusable water bottles and waste management, Cahillane added.

Mayflea, an annual on-campus thrift pop-up organized by Mayfest, offers students an opportunity to put together secondhand outfits for Dillo Day.

STITCH Magazine partners with Mayfest each year to create a vintage-inspired Dillo Day lookbook, which offers suggestions for colors, patterns and materials to help students throw together a simple, on-theme outfit.

Weinberg sophomore Jackie Le, an editor-in-chief of STITCH, said students can also shop sustainably at thrift stores in Evanston or in Andersonville, which is on the Red Line. If secondhand shopping isn’t possible, they urged Dillo attendees to buy pieces they see themselves wearing multiple times.

“It should not just be a one and done,” Le said. 

This year, STITCH also published an article with last-minute outfit ideas, which drew inspiration from items most people might already have in their closets. Le said that repurposing clothes or even sourcing them from friends can help minimize waste, keeping one-time use items out of landfills.

“Look at your closet, look at the people around you and what clothes you can borrow from them, and look at how many times you can wear one thing,” they said. 

Weinberg junior Sophie Lewis said she has found fashion inspiration from Mayfest and STITCH helpful, but said they should increase social media promotion to raise awareness about sustainably sourcing clothes.

“Maybe they could do reels of them going to Goodwill and being like, ‘Oh my god, this would be hype for Dillo Day,’” Lewis said. 

Jason McKean, assistant dean of students, director of strategy and operations and director of Off-Campus Life, said OCL sets up receptacles in the community and facilitates pre-Dillo conversations with houses that traditionally throw parties on Dillo Day to minimize waste. In these conversations, McKean said he encourages event hosts to have trash cans available, as  that makes a difference when it comes to waste management.

“If the student sees a trash can, they’ll probably use it,” he said. “If they don’t see one, they’ll hold onto their trash, but they’re not going to hold onto it real long, and eventually it’s going to get dropped in an alley or a roadway or a sidewalk or somebody’s yard.” 

sustainNU also works with Mayfest to “assure they have proper bins for managing waste during the event and know how to handle trash vs recycling,” Cahillane wrote in the statement.

Mayfest partners with The Urban Canopy/Compost Club, a third-party compost vendor, to manage disposal on the Lakefill, according to a statement from Mayfest. 

However, Lewis said she didn’t notice the compost and recycling receptacles on the Lakefill. Instead, she said she observed most people throwing waste in whichever bin was most convenient, without giving further thought to correctly separating items.

“People aren’t looking on the bottom of their bottles and being like, ‘Oh, does it have the triangle?’” Lewis said. 

Even with proper receptacles, it can be difficult for certain items to be recycled effectively, Lewis said. For example, if paper or plastic containers from food trucks or pop-up vendors still have food on them, they can’t be recycled. 

To resolve these issues, Lewis said clearer messaging from Mayfest would be helpful, as well as streamlining eco-friendly options. She said if everything was recyclable or compostable by default, there wouldn’t be a need for people to use their discretion when disposing of items.

On Dillo Day, sustainNU works to “prioritize reusables over disposables when possible, recyclables over items that have to be landfilled, and compostable options where they make sense,” Cahillane wrote in the statement. One milestone was sustainNU’s with Mayfest to transition away from single-use plastic water bottles and toward bulk water dispensers. This allowed festival-goers to bring their own reusable bottles into the event and refill them on the Lakefill. 

Sustainability efforts also don’t stop when the music does.

At the end of the day, crew members from Mayfest and For Members Only clean up remaining trash on the Lakefill and properly dispose of it. The next morning, similar efforts take place off-campus.

“Dillo Day takes a little bit of a toll on the neighborhood,” McKean said.

To combat this, OCL organizes an annual post-Dillo cleanup.

At 8 a.m. the morning after Dillo Day, students fueled up with breakfast and coffee provided by OCL before heading off campus to pick up waste. This year, McKean said Cats Who Compost, 2303 Sheridan and the Associated Student Government’s Sustainability Committee partnered with OCL to put on the event.

McKean said trash is a year-round problem, but even more so after Dillo Day. He has been pleasantly surprised by the turnout of students willing to help clean up. Evanston community members are also grateful for the initiative, he added. 

Although it’s an early morning after a long day, McKean said students who live off campus might be incentivized to take part in the cleanup because they have a stake in how the neighborhood looks and feels. However, he added that a fair share of on-campus students also lend a hand.

This year was SESP junior Bianca Umaña-Taylor’s first time attending the cleanup. She said she chose to join because she regularly wakes up early and wanted to start her day by doing something good for the community.

“I feel like we take advantage of Evanston and what it gives us, but we don’t really give back to it as much,” Umaña-Taylor said. 

According to McKean, the current system of preventative sustainability measures combined with a trash pickup the next morning is effective, but that there’s always room for improvement.

Lewis said she thought sustainability could have been “more integrated into (Dillo) in general,” whether that has to do with better waste management or even offering more plant-based options at the food trucks.

Beyond reusable bottles and secondhand clothing, Cahillane also urged students to think twice when they’re offered a “freebie” or other promotional materials. 

“Take it if you’ll use it and refuse it if you won’t,” she wrote in the statement.

Although Mayfest didn’t add any new sustainability initiatives to Dillo this year, according to a statement from the group, the organization is “always exploring new options and partnerships in order to make (the) festival more sustainable.” According to the statement, Mayfest is also hoping to introduce reusable materials in high-waste areas like the food court and beer garden.

Lewis said Dillo Day could be a promising opportunity to further promote environmental consciousness because it’s a student-led event, but added that the current deficiency of eco-friendliness is not specific to the festival. 

Instead, she called for greater university-level changes.

“It’s not just about this one event,” Lewis said. “It’s about what we do as a whole and also how we think as a student body.” 

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