What I learned about having a BBQ with compostable food service materials

This past weekend I tried to have compostable food service materials used at two somewhat large summer BBQs (about 100 people in attendance at each). There were potato starch utensils, sugarcane fibre plates and bowls, and corn "plastic" cups. I also tried to collect the used materials to eventually use to enrich in my home garden plot.

I feel like I made some rookie mistakes. Lots of garbage got dumped into my compostable material container. That makes me want to write down what I learned:

• Have lots of good signs, really big, clear signs, that stand up right beside the things you are talking about. After the fact, my wife had this good idea of taping a little fork or cup to the signs explaining how they are biodegradable.
• Educate the organizers. They, and their volunteers, can help reduce the chance that waste gets casually dumped into whatever container is at hand.
  
• Educate the caterers, or, more to point, educate people you know will be generating waste. I found a lot of plastic food packaging from the caterers that had been dumped into the "compostable waste" container.
• Use a specially coloured, and well labeled container to collect the compostable materials. I only had a cardboard box with a bag in it. The purpose of my box was not clear enough because it looked like a garbage container (even though I had signs beside it). There is a good chance that my home town of Kingston will soon start regular collections of compostable waste. Then there will be an conventional colour of container that people will associate with compostable waste.
  
• Put the regular garbage, compostable materials, and recyclable materials receptacles all together because when people want to throw away their stuff, they usually have a mix of all three to throw away.
• Don't offer a mix of compostable and disposable materials when serving the food. I failed to insist that no plastic disposable materials be used. For example, at one of the BBQs some plastic knives were added to the compostable forks and at the other they decided to have plastic cups. The consequence was that people were confused and I spent a good amount of time picking plastic out of the compostable materials before I could put them into my compost bin.