Who Remembers Phish's Green Crew?

What is the Green Crew? How can I help?

What is it? The Green Crew is a collection of volunteers who make special effort to keep parking lots and entry areas clean, and thereby help keep venues and locals happy, Mother Nature stronger, and the history of Phish longer. At each show, between 40 and 80 volunteers collect bags of trash and recyclables before and after shows, and are provided with bags to help clean up after tens of thousands. (You could also bring your own, something worth doing for any show!) This represents a tremendous effort, and a superb opportunity for Phish fans to distinguish themselves from the sort of rabble that gets acts banned from locales and venues. To help out the Green Crew, follow some basic tenents, keep your trash bagged, bring extra bags for others, encourage others to bag their trash, and pick up a few bottles or cans before you leave the lot.

History: The group was started in the spring of 1994, informally associated with "Greenpeace Henry" (Henry Schwab; on the left) and "Greenpeace Mike" (Mike Hayes), who toured with Phish manning a Greenpeace table and later moved to found the Waterwheel Foundation; since then Green Crew (not affiliated with Waterwheel, and never affiliated with Greenpeace, contrary to popular conception) has been headed up by Shane Johnson .

Basic tenants: Glass, alcohol, and vending are generally not permitted in parking lots. Nonetheless, you may create or encounter trash. Please do your best to keep it in cans, or else bags, or at least organized piles (when and where neither cans or bags are available.) A great idea is to take a few (or a boxful of) heavy-duty trash bags to a show, even if you won't be creating any trash yourself! Put a bottle or two in each bag, to weight it against the wind, and place the bag in an obvious (easily visible) but not dangerous (won't be tripped on or driven over) place, and watch the warmth and colletivity of phans emerge. You'll be amazed how caring and careful people can be once they're given a chance, and a clear signal.

Black is trash, white recyc: At some shows, some volunteer fans have used this system: black trash bags for trash, and white trash bags for recyclables. Some such consistency would help make trash and bag collection easier, but take care to check before you toss something in -- it's not a fool-proof system yet, and people do flail. (If you have any other ideas that would help trash-collection and recycling efforts, we'd love to get them and put them on this page!)

How to join the G-Crew: Ultrafunk posted to rec.music.phish (on 12/18/96): Approximately 45 minutes following each show we meet somewhere usually in eye sight from the will-call office. Anyone is welcome to lend a hand. Ask Shane (tall, red hair, with a clipboard, irish-looking; but, and this makes things fun, not his twin brother (!) Shawn) for details.

Thanks also to Jack R. Lebowitz, Rosemary, Mike "Lerdawg", and Craig "AntlpeXing" .

http://www.phish.net/faq/greencrew.html