Events

Summer is nearly upon us, and organizers everywhere are completing their plans to improve recycling at outdoor events. From state fairs to city sporting events, every occasion that brings the crowds together is an opportunity to edge closer to our zero-waste future.

In the hospitality industry, holidays lead to a significant uptick in companies booking parties. After all, every business needs a place to celebrate the year in review and look forward to the year to come. Typically, that place is a hotel ballroom.

If you want to create a sustainable park waste management system, take your cues from the National Park Service. Across all 411 national parks, the NPS has pledged to keep at least half of all waste out of landfills (as of 2018, they were nearly there, with a 40-percent diversion rate). To reach that 50-percent diversion threshold, the NPS encourages parks to separate post-use materials into multiple streams: reuse, recycling, composting, and — when all else fails — landfills.

Large-scale events generate significant volumes of waste, which is why organizers need a comprehensive Waste Management Plan (WMP) in place from the very start. The creation of this plan does not have to be a daunting process. In fact, putting some extra time into your WMP while organizing your event is a proactive step that can make the event easier to manage.

The largest outdoor music festivals bring hundreds of thousands of revelers together to eat, drink, dance — and discard their waste. Clearly, not every water bottle makes it into the recycling bin

Municipal holiday events are one of the year’s best community-building tools for cities and towns of every size. But when you gather large groups of people in outdoor spaces for a fabulous celebration, you create lots of waste. It’s the organizer’s job to handle all of that waste, gathering it from distinct collection points, bringing it to bulk hoppers, and hiring haulers to bring it to materials recovery facilities, city composters, or landfills.

Increasingly, university students and sustainability offices are pressuring their institutions to make the switch to zero-waste events. Even when events fall short of this goal — usually defined as 90-percent diversion from landfills — organizers who plan for zero waste drastically reduce the occasion's carbon footprint. Increasingly, university students and sustainability offices are pressuring their institutions to make the switch to zero-waste events. Even when events fall short of this goal — usually defined as 90-percent diversion from landfills — organizers who plan for zero waste drastically reduce the occasion's carbon footprint.

Summer is the busy season for concerts, festivals, and other outdoor events. And while these get-togethers build a sense of community and provide family-friendly activities, they also create a waste management challenge. Luckily, there are plenty of GSA-approved companies that provide specialized equipment for diverting waste from landfills as well as resources for throwing a zero-waste event.

City parks offer a refuge from concrete and cars, but managing waste to keep green spaces green can be more of a challenge than you'd think. The majority of visitors never see or think about the complex waste management challenges these public spaces face — which is just how park managers like it. If visitors have trash collection on their mind, it's likely that something amiss, like an overflowing trash can, has caused it.

Special events can be huge economic drivers for municipalities, venues, and food service providers — but they also come with unique waste management challenges. The goal for any large-scale entertainment operation is to manage waste both safely and efficiently. In order to do that, managers must carefully plan multi-stream waste systems, and they must provide staff with the tools they need to safely route each type of waste toward its own unique destination.