Rebecca Shaw and Mike Tones are new Phish fans, but they're into the band enough to travel from Helena, Mont., to Phish Festival 8 in Indio — in their Prius.

“Fifty miles a gallon,” said Tones, 43, already hunkered down in a choice spot for the first day of the festival at Empire Polo Club.

Shaw, 45, snagged a Phish water bottle, which she will be able to fill up for free during the weekend at stations throughout the grounds, cutting down on the festival's plastic waste.

“Phish and the other entertainers wanted a very green venue,” said John Beerman, marketing manager of California Bio-Mass in Thermal. He was at the polo fields Friday to check recycling efforts.

Festival 8 is aiming to outdo the recycling efforts at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival earlier this year, upping the 50 percent recycling rates to 80 percent to 90 percent, Beerman said.

“It's going to be a good event, “ said Robert Edwards, environmental program coordinator for the city of Indio. “It's a lot more organized this time.”

In addition to cutting down on water bottles, most of the food booths are using recyclable napkins, plates, forks and bags.

The festival organizers also set up an eco-shuttle with bio-diesel powered vans and hybrids ferrying fans to and from Los Angeles and Palm Springs airports and area hotels.

About 300 sets of recycling bins have been placed around the grounds, three bins per set, Beerman said. Black is for trash going to landfills; green for organics, such as paper and food; and blue for plastics and other recyclables. And instead of one big sorting center for everything, the festival has three — one for the main performance area, two for the camping areas.

“It's so much more organic and safer,” Beerman said. “The (pickup) carts are only working in one little region. For our carbon footprint, we're much more condensed.”

Friday afternoon, even before the festival grounds were officially open, workers were already busy at the site, picking up bags of trash and recyclables from the bins and driving it in small pickup carts to the recycling centers.

Crews there checked each bag to make sure, for example, there were no bottles or plastic mixed in with the organic materials or vice versa.

“It's proper source preparation,” Beerman said. “We don't want contaminated organics. If it's really mixed and dirty, it has to go to the landfill.”

The organics go to California Bio-Mass, where they will be composted and turned into organic fertilizers used by homeowners associations as well as farmers in the valley, Beerman said.

“To have world-class events with world-class recycling, this is working toward that,” he said.