Recycle Bins and Waste Bins
Struggle with sorting your recyclables and waste? Why does every venue have its own style of bins? Every city, region, and country have their own rules.
Confused? You should be!
Average Diversion Rate
The good news is you are not alone. The bad news is according to the EPA, the average diversion rate from landfill in the United States is 32%, meaning that about 68% of the nation’s waste is, unfortunately, buried in the earth.
Sustainability Challenges
We find sustainability challenges are very often also rooted in education challenges. While examples abound, one scenario we face over and over again in events is having widely inconsistent colors, shapes, stream delineations, and messaging on our waste receptacles ranging.
What’s the Solution?
So, if education is the key, we, as sustainable event producers, must be both students and teachers. Let’s get started:
- Learn from the venue and local haulers what can be recycled, donated, or sent to a landfill
- Check the venue’s bins and ensure all of the bins are together. It turns out people won’t go too far to sort their trash.
- Educate your staff and those working on the front lines of the event where the waste bins are and how they should sort them.
- Teach participants how to do the same through early education, social media, conference apps, and gamification.
- Get accurate data from the hauler and tell stakeholders how well they did throughout the event.
The Biggest Take Away
Here’s a tip that will save you both time and money…rethink your event to have very little waste thrown into these bins. The fewer single-use items, disposables, and paper available onsite, the less there is to sort, recycle, and dispose of afterward.
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