The Beachfest Emancipation Celebration made a bigger mess than organisers hoped this year, but it still took a step toward becoming a “green” event.

The Chewstick Foundation, Beachfest’s organisers, attempted to make the event environmentally friendly through the collaborative BEachfest GREEN initiative. However, logistical challenges limited its effectiveness this year.

According to a report written for The Chewstick Foundation by volunteer Antonia Issa, organisers had hoped to limit the waste produced by the event, educate the public and collect data in order to develop a no-trace model for future events.

However, Miss Issa said elements of the plan had to be altered after the Department of Parks denied some aspects of the event, including gated entry to the beach.

The report stated that a memorandum of understanding drafted by the Parks Department made the department responsible for the maintenance and clean-up of the beach, while Chewstick was responsible for cleaning its “campus” on the west side of the beach and providing five individuals to assist with the clean-up effort.

While organisers had planned on including fully staffed bars at the event to limit the use of glass bottles and reduce the desire for attendees to bring their own alcohol, the report said: “With no control of intake of public and items brought to the beach, Chewstick could not obtain a liquor licence.”

According to the report a number of volunteers assisted with the BEachfest GREEN initiative, installing signs and trash cans the day before and on day of the event, emptying the bins and providing attendees with trash and recycling bags.

Vendors made a concerted effort to reduce packaging materials, use environmentally-friendly materials when possible and keep their areas tidy.

However, without screening, the report said attendees brought their own alcohol and “excessive belongings” including many items still in their original packaging.

While the report’s conclusion stated that the west side of the beach was clean by around 11pm that day, the initiative failed to make a notable impact outside of the Chewstick campus.

“It is difficult to describe the magnitude of waste to people who had not attended the event,” the report states. “There were shoes, inflatable balls, make-up, wallets, chairs, towels and clothes half buried in the sand. It was as if each person on Horseshoe Bay Beach on July 31, 2014, had brought a suitcase to the beach, opened it up, shook it around and then walked away leaving everything behind.

“The level of intoxication of the public could not be monitored since they brought their own alcohol. As such, people quite literally drank/smoked themselves into a stupor, becoming unintelligible and careless.”

The conclusion stated that the aftermath of the event demonstrated a lack of education about environmental sustainability, recycling, waste management, underage drinking and drink driving, along with a lack of enforcement and control of these issues by the relevant agencies.

“Because these issues have proliferated themselves across an entire culture, we strongly believe that we need to tackle this from the bottom up, and from the top down,” the report stated. “We need to come together, raise funds and develop an educational campaign, teaching people to respect what is theirs so that it will still be around for future generations.

“We consider this event to have been a small but firm step forward, towards gaining momentum and the ability to educate both the Government and the public about waste reduction, recycling and behaving in a more sustainable manner, which parallels the core ideals of the Chewstick Foundation and the organisations that made up the collaboration.”

The report recommended making several changes to the event in future years, including using security gates, allowing Chewstick to charge an entrance fee to support the organisation’s administration and waste management expenses, issuing wristbands to those over 18 to prevent underage drinking and ending the event earlier to allow daytime clean-up.