Life HuggerOn Sunday, October 9, 2022, music festival “Kyoto Onpaku 2022” organized by music group Quruli was held at Umekoji Park in Kyoto. The festival, which has been held since 2007, marks its 16th time this year and the first time in three years due to COVID-19. Participating artists included Macaroni Enpitsu, Vaundy, SHISHAMO, Noriyuki Makihara, and Antonio Loureiro & Rafael Martini.
This event is not all about music, however. Kyoto Onpaku is known as an environmentally friendly music event with making positive efforts towards the environment. Thanks to efforts such as sorting garbage and resources, introducing reusable tableware and avoiding flyers, garbage is minimized to almost zero at the events.
This year, its organizers took their approach a step further with a new recycling initiative. The “Shigenga Quruli Project” – literally meaning “Resources Circling Project” – was launched to avoid disposing of resources and promote circulating them more than ever before. Two major projects were carried out to put this goal into action.
The first is the “Composting Project” in which a public compost station was set up in Umekoji Park to turn raw garbage generated at the event into fertilizers. Food waste generated from the Kyoto Onpaku was added to the compost, which then is composted over the course of four months. The result will be used as fertilizers for the trees in Umekoji Park and the flowerbeds of local citizens.
The other is the development of vegan ice-cream “Shigekuru Ice” using ingredients from Kyoto’s food loss. There are many sake breweries in Kyoto, but it’s often the case that the by-product of sake brewing, sake lees, gets wasted. Furthermore, Kyoto is famous for its wagashi (Japanese sweets), but unlike when making tsubu-an (mashed sweet red bean paste), a large amount of red bean skin is thrown away when making koshi-an (smooth sweet red bean paste). In order to make use of these Kyoto-based wasted ingredients, the organizers jointly developed a vegan ice-cream with “mumokuteki cafe & foods”—known for its animal-free menus that are deliciously cooked with safe and secure ingredients.
Initially, the idea for the Shigenga Quruli Project came from Shigeru Kishida, vocalist and guitarist of Quruli, with the aim to start a fundamental environmental initiative at Kyoto Onpaku that never existed before.
“It’s not just a one off effort,” said Akihiro Yasui from Circular Initiatives, who is involved in the circular activities in the Shigenga Quruli Project. “We plan to work with the local people to create a system that will become an ongoing effort.”
“Recycling and upcycling shouldn’t be something that is dealt after waste is generated,” he went on. “We need to establish a mechanism that prevents waste from being generated from its predictable stages.”
Quruli has an idea for a restaurant that uses only food loss ingredients. Whatever comes next, one thing’s for sure: we can’t wait to see the developments of their ideas and efforts to eliminate waste and circulating them as resources.
Originally published on Life Hugger.
Translated by Ayako Karino.
