Cleanest & Greenest

The Portland Rose Festival is proud to celebrate over 20 years of award-winning Clean and Green parades in Portland.

The Rose Festival values environmental responsibility and strives to keep the festival clean and green. For decades the festival has been recognized internationally for its famous parade cleanups—collaborative projects channeling the combined energy of corporate, civic and nonprofit partners, along with hundreds of volunteers. In its fourth decade, the Clean & Green Festival program has concentrated on the economy and education of training responsible parade-goers to reduce their own impact on city streets.

You can be a part of our Cleanest & Greenest team by making a charitable contribution to the Portland Rose Festival Foundation to help cover the cost of things like parade route trash bags and CityFair recycling stations!
Or sign up to volunteer!

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• The Portland Rose Festival continues to make the CareOregon Starlight Parade and the Grand Floral Parade carbon-neutral by purchasing carbon offsets to counter the carbon emissions of this year’s parade entries. An estimated 9 tons of carbon dioxide is emitted by the cars, floats and motorcycles in the parade – even the garbage trucks and street cleaners contribute to the carbon. PGE also purchases enough offsets to cover the entire run of CityFair, the Rose Festival’s largest event, so the estimated 106,000-kilowatt hours of power used by the rides and the vendors could be offset by investments in wind power and other renewable energy sources.
• Volunteers distribute bags along the parade routes, to help parade viewers keep the streets of Portland clean.
• The clean-up trucks are part of the parade! They spray and sweep and pack the trash as they make their way tucked closely behind the last unit of the parades. They’re decorated, with lights for the CareOregon Starlight Parade and with festoons for the Grand Floral Parade and the Fred Meyer Junior Parade.
• Portland is so good at keeping it green that we were named the North American host for the 2013 World Environment Day celebration by the United Nations Environment Programme, 1 of 5 host cities selected around the world!
• In 2013, a large scale waterfront restoration project led by the Parks Department was completed. The two-part facelift intended to provide the .5 mile park with better drainage and promote healthy and speedy grass growth. The Portland Rose Festival is Waterfront Park’s largest event, so it’s fitting that the organization is also the largest single contributor to the restoration efforts. The Portland Rose Festival Foundation contributed $100,000 (nearly one-third of the project’s total cost!).

Help us keep our parades clean and green by volunteering!