Going Zero Waste: Implementing Organics Diversion at Stadiums, Venues & Events

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode we explore the work involved in organising, planning and putting in place an organics diversion program for events with our guest, Leslie Lukacs. As founder and principal of L2 Environmental (California, USA), Leslie has spent many years organising zero waste policies at various types of events and venues. She tells us about her experiences, how to work with local composters and source the right serviceware, how to approach educating staff and the public, how to deal with common challenges, and much more.

 

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EPISODE SLIDESHOW

 

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TRANSCRIPT

 

Making an Event Zero Waste

 

Q: Can you tell me what goes into making an event zero waste – what it’s about and what you do to make this happen?

Leslie Lukacs: Yeah, we usually get involved with the event right at the beginning so that we’re part of the planning team. We create a plan to get to zero waste and we work with all the different groups that are organising the event – from the event promoter, to sponsorship, to volunteers…And then we also order equipment, like the type of recycling and composting bins the event will need. We do any training for exhibitors or food vendors. Then we set up systems to collect the materials for either recycling, composting or reuse. And one of the big items that is reused is the food at the end of the event, so we make sure that we partner with local non-profits or some time of food bank for homeless shelters to make sure that any leftover food goes back out to the community instead of the landfill.

Q: What are you usually aiming for, in terms of diversion rates?

LL: So for us when we plan a zero waste event, our goal is to get a ninety percent or better, and so the main thing that goes into that is designing the event to go for zero waste, you can’t just go to an event and just recycling and collect materials on the backend, you really have to plan for your event to be zero waste.

Q: What happens generally with the rest of the food waste?

LL: Yeah, so in designing a zero waste event, you have to design for zero waste. So you have to make sure that the materials that you use, or the items that are being used and sold at the event are compostable and recyclable. So when we go to zero waste, we typically have a two-bin system – one bin for the recyclables and one bin for the organics – because we make sure all the vendors are using maybe compostable products and we’re really minimizing the waste that’s in the event in the first place. So for the organics, vendors might have used compostable plates and cups and utensils – and all that gets mixed in with the organic material, like the food. And yes, that material goes to a composting site.

 

Compostable Plastics and Reusable Servceware: Challenges & Solutions

 

Q: And you mention compostable plastics here. We did an episode on the show not too long about the standards in compostable plastics, and the challenges we face at the moment, as standards do not always represent what composters are dealing with on the ground.

You make sure to use BPI certified plastics when you’re using compostable plastics – but not all composting sites will accept the plastics as the rate they decompose can be at odds with their composting rate, so you have to check with your composting facility and be careful what plastics you go for.  So you face challenges here for using compostable plastics…

LL: Yeah, and it’s confusing for the public because it’s a new product out on the market in terms of what they’re used to seeing. And it looks and feels like plastic to them as well, and it’s easy for event attendees to put that material into a recycling bin thinking it’s just regular plastic. And then there’s also a challenge on the back-end if those recyclables are going to a material recovery facility; sorters at a material recovery facility also get confused if it’s plastic or compostable. So if we have to use that material then marketing and messaging is very important. One thing we do is have a green bar around the compostable product that says “composting” so that it’s more clear to the public and to the waste sorters that this material should be composted instead of recycled.

Q: If you were setting up an event, and the local facilities won’t accept the compostable plastics you’re looking to use – what do you do then?

LL: You know, we would actually love to see reuse. The compostable are just another single-use, disposable product at the end of the day, and there are some possible benefits to that, but the reality is that it’s just another disposable product. And we have demonstrated at large-scale events – maybe ten or twenty thousand people – where actually we have a reuse system with plates and cups and utensils. It’s a deposit-based system, where when they go to a food vendor, they’re actually given a reusable plate and cup and fork for deposit. And we’ve done deposits anywhere from one US dollar to five US dollars.

And when they’re done eating, we have these buckets and stations all around the food service area, and they can just put their plates and cups in the buckets there, and we have an attendant who will give them the refund back. And if, for some reason, they don’t put the item back or they take the item, at least we’re left with some funding to go replenish the supply of plates and cups and forks. And for some events, like some on-site, multiple-day music festivals, we’ll do washing stations as well where there’s a crew, and that’s part of the service or what the event is paying for – that we’ll be washing the dishes right on-site.

 

Preparing A Zero Waste Strategy for Different Types of Events

 

Q: When we talk about events, we’re talking about festivals, music festivals, arenas, fairs and so on, and as someone who has worked with all these different types of events – would the approach be different for each type of event, or is there a basic blueprint that you follow for all of them?

LL: Your approach changes event-to-event, and it can even change from the same type of an event, because each facility is unique and each area is unique, and so I’ve set-up zero waste programs for major stadiums for sixty, seventy or eighty thousand people, down to small community festivals, like music festivals or cultural festivals, and multiple-day festivals – so they’re all vary unique. If you can control what’s being purchased for the event, then it’s a lot easier.

So let’s take a stadium for example, where people have to buy a ticket to get in and they can only buy the products that are sold in that stadium. And then it’s much easier to control how to recycle and compost if you can control the products they’re buying. But if it’s like a street festival where it’s open to the public, then that’s a lot more difficult because they can bring in their coffee cup, or something that you haven’t really planned for that is just destined for the landfill because of the type of product it is – like baby diapers. So sometimes there are various challenges within each type of event, so we really have to understand the event to design the correct type of program.

Q: And would you say street festivals would be the most challenging out of all the ones you’ve worked on?

LL: Yeah, I think parades are…actually, I’ve never done a zero waste parade, and I’ve worked with one community who has a famous parade called the Rose Parade in Pasadena on New Years every year. And I just don’t know the way to work with the parade, because in a parade like that, people spend the night on the streets the night before and it’s a big deal for the community. So yeah, those are harder ones – you know, street festivals where it’s open to the public provide a little bit more challenges.

And there’s just different behaviour at different types of events: like I’ve also worked with performing art centres, and the behaviour is that you might have your drink, or you might bring something into the theatre, but you carry it back out with you. Whereas a stadium at a football game, the behaviour is that you just leave whatever you used or consumed right there on the ground. So you have to be aware of different behaviour so you can, again, design the right type of program.

Q: I’d like you to share how exactly you go about making an event zero waste. Can you talk me through the first steps?

LL: Sure. First we work with the event organiser, and we ask for a list of the types of food vendors that he’s going to have, so we can understand the number of booths and the type of food being served, and if exhibitors are going to be generating single use products – like, for example, a bag of chips, in which the material the chips come in isn’t recyclable or compostable. So we try and identify problematic products first, and if the event does want to go to zero waste, they have to take it very seriously, because we need everybody’s help. And so sometimes what we do is we have the vendors sign an agreement that they are going to use products that are compostable and recyclable, and that they’re going to help us with this zero waste program.

With some events they’ve even gone so far as putting in the contract language that if you don’t support the zero waste program then you can get fined or warned, and if they are a repeat offender then they won’t be invited to come back to the event the following year. So, sometimes when we start talking about zero waste, costs are a concern to the event organiser, and one thing that we’ve done to address costs is to look for sponsorship funding. And we’ve created a whole new type of sponsorship package, and we call it a green sponsorship package, or a sustainability sponsorship package. So on recycling bins or on the marketing material, we’re able to say, “This company is bringing you the sustainability program”, or “we thank this particular company for their financial support in making zero waste a reality”. So we’re able to identify new funds that can help offset these costs for an event to invest in either recycling bins or compost bins, or anything else that may be an additional cost.

 

Education is the Key

 

Q: And education I’m sure features a great deal in your work. Can you tell me more about that, and whom exactly you work with?

LL: There is education on all levels for all the different people involved in an event, from working in the event to attending the event. So with education prior to the event, I mentioned contracts that we do and vendor agreements, we also attend pre-event meetings and we do presentations. We’re part of the team, so we’re educating all the different groups that organise events at the same time. And then, if we’re going to solicit for volunteers, we do a training the day before with those volunteers and those volunteers may help collect the material. We recruit volunteers to save costs for the event, and we try and identify something of value to them to keep the volunteers – for example if it’s a music festival they would get a day for free, or if it’s a community festival we would provide them meals or a ticket to get in. And we do make sure all the volunteers have a t-shirt or something that identifies them as working at the event and being part of the green team.

So we do the training a day before, and then we also make sure they’re trained the day of, because even though it might seem easy just to clean out recycling bins or sort material, we need it to happen in a systematic way so that the event flows properly and we’re not in anybody’s way. So we make sure they’re trained.

And then on the public side, we look for any way to educate the public. We’ve done anything from stage announcements, at stadiums we might do an announcement on the jumbotron, to trying to get inside the program – so if it’s a musical or concert venue we’re in the program itself that talks about the recycling program. We’ve done banners, signage; even the bins themselves serve as a form of marketing. So yeah, we just do anything we can possible to make sure the public is aware of the recycling procedures.

Another thing that we do in terms of marketing or education is we partner with a well-known person – if it’s a music festival or a sporting event we try and get maybe one of the acts to do some type of sound bite or some type of messaging for the recycling program, as well as within a stadium, using the local heroes to do some type of marketing for us.

 

Involving Local Composting and Anaerobic Digestion Sites

 

Q: Another important thing is establishing a connection with the local composting or AD site as well. Can you tell me a bit about how you involve the local composting sites?

LL: Yes, usually a part of designing a program is to identify which composting site can take the materials, and who is going to haul those materials. So, a lot of communities that contract a hauler for the city, they also do the hauling for organics collection, so we just have to make sure that whoever is hauling the material, takes it to the correct facility.

Sometimes there are locations where there is no commercial composting, and when that happens it’s actually a lot more difficult to get to zero waste. So some of the things that we have done is that we were in a more rural area for a music festival on private land and the owner allowed us to create a compost pile right there on his property. So we brought in a chipper and we were able to chip the compostable products, and we were able to create the right mixture with the biodegradable products and food, and create the compost pile right on site. Some other ideas would be contacting local pig farmers or other types of farmers to see if they would be interested in just the pure food waste.

So we’ve been able to manage it like that, but those are exceptions: the majority of projects that I work with, it goes to a commercial composting site.

 

Changes Needed For Successful Organics Diversion

 

Q: And typically how big are the changes needed to make an event zero waste? I’m thinking about the event organisers here, because as you said before, they might be worried about costs, but would they also be worried about structural changes for example?

LL: That’s really where I come in, you know, they have so many other things to worry about and I try to make it as easy for them and the event as possible. And in terms of budget – many events already have a cleaning budget and they’re used to hiring some type of group to do the cleaning, so that’s typically the budget that we draw from. This would be for more for a temporary event like a music event or something, but instead of putting the money towards a cleaning company, they would put their money into a zero waste company. And that company would make sure the event was as clean as possible, but also sort out the materials on the back-end and make sure that they go to recycling and composting.

But when I work with a venue, for example like a stand-alone facility that puts on events, I do the training internally. So I’m actually training how the employees collect and manage the material – I don’t bring in crew, I use their crew. It’s all training and getting that that company or that venue up to speed on how to go zero waste.

Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes if a sports venue, or a zoo or theme park wants to go zero waste, it doesn’t happen overnight, it can take months or years to get to zero waste because you are making changes and sometimes those changes take longer. Also, like, changing the products that you’re using. Or getting rid of other products and finding new products to take care of older products that were just destined for the landfill.

Q: I would imagine that depending on the size of the event, and the type of event, you would need a certain amount of people to work with, or a team, to implement the changes. Can you talk me through the difference in terms of the team needed, for a small, medium and large event?

LL: It always varies and depends on the event. It’s hard to just give a general number. But when I work with a stadium or a theme park, or some type of tourist attraction, that’s just me. It doesn’t really require much more. And so in that situation we might write a plan for their facility; I’ll look at their sponsorship and see what type of funding they can get through sponsorship, and then I’ll work with their event manager. Once the facility manager or facility director approves the program, I tend to work with more with the events manager, as well as the facilities manager – the person who’s in charge of making sure that facility is clean. So that’s how the changes happen.

But if it’s a festival and a one-time event in public space and they do want staff – the more staff the better. More staff is an increase in how much it’s going to cost, so we’d have to look at volunteers and if there’s a good market for volunteers. So it really just varies. One thing that I do want to say about volunteers is that if you have anybody who’s interested in volunteers: we’ve seen that about twenty-five to fifty percent of the volunteers that sign up do not show up. So if you are planning volunteers, make sure you plan for more volunteers than what you need, because some people have very good intentions but may not be able to actually take off the time.

 

Common Challenges For Organics Diversion

 

Q: What are the challenges you face for setting up the system?

LL: I think the biggest challenge is change. If it’s with a stand-alone facility or some type of venue, many people aren’t as open to change and so sometimes I find that when I’m talking about all these changes that they might not believe it would happen, or that they don’t think it can happen. Or if an employee somewhere along the way had already suggested this and they didn’t do it… So it’s just really about trying to work with the people within the venue and working through that change and making that transition as easy as possible for them.

What I find, when I go into these venues, is that about ten percent love the idea: they support zero waste, they want to be composting and recycling because they already do it at home, so they are fully supportive of this program. And probably about another eighty percent don’t mind, as long as it doesn’t infringe on their day, or take too much time out of their day – you know, they’ll support it and they’ll go along. And really, only about ten percent are the naysayers and talk about how this can’t happen – they’re the ones who have an issue with change. So what I try and do is identify the top ten percent that really support the initiative, and I make them leaders internally, and I provide them with whatever tools they need to make this succesfull. So it’s great when you see that ten percent, and then the eighty percent who will do it if it’s easy for them…And so that’s how we address change, by working with those who want it first, and then…

Q: …Bring the rest along with you….

LL: Correct, yes.

Q: And are there any other challenges, maybe logistically speaking?

LL: There’re always little logistic things that come up, and it’s just the nature of events when you’re dealing with so many people coming to an area at one time. So I would say just expect for things to happen, and to know that it probably won’t run smoothly, there probably will be things that come up. You just need to be able to think quick on your feet and find solutions that work. And maybe something you did didn’t work, but now you have a better start for next year.

One thing that I do is that I create a report after the event, and part of my report is pros and cons, challenges and solutions. So we identify things that we can do better – because there’s always something that you can do better – and then we identify solutions so that the next time this event happens it just gets better and better with time.

Q: For my final question: is there anything you’d like to see happen in the near future in relation to zero waste events or how they are organised?

LL: I would love to see more and more events be zero waste, and go zero waste, because it’s actually a lot easier than what they think. There are challenges and items that need to be identified when planning this, but it’s actually a lot easier than you think, and I think it’s just such a better sustainable way to manage your event. And you have lots of people coming to an event and you have this audience, so why not take that opportunity to also educate them on sustainability and provide them the tools so that they can be responsible event goers. I think it’s really important to educate the public that they can do this. Because, let’s face it, most people go to some type of community event every year, so if we’re educating these people, then we have a better change that they’ll do this at home as well.

New Strategies For Recycling Commercial Waste: The Industrial Ecology Program of NSW, Australia

This episode corresponds to Lesson 3 and Lesson 5  of our online course.

This week we’re taking a trip down under, to highlight new and exciting recycling program created by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) of New South Wales, Australia. The program, called the Industrial Ecology Business Support Network, aims to facilitate and encourage the reuse of industrial waste materials between medium to large businesses in order to recover recyclable materials from the commercial sector. We speak to Phil Molyneaux of the EPA in New South Wales, who tells us more about the program and how it operates, what it will do for businesses, and how it may be replicated in other countries.

Thank you to Resource Recovery Australia for making this episode possible.

Resource Recovery Australia is a national profit-for-purpose business, providing coaching, consultancy and operational waste services, based on their award winning social enterprise model. They work with Councils, communities and businesses to maximise the economic, social and environmental outcomes from resource recovery. For more information, visit their website.

Three upcoming events that are on our radar this week:

The Joinville Zero Waste Week in Brazil,

The National Zero Waste Youth Congress, Brazil,

and

The International Zero Waste Youth Congress in Puerto Rico.

  

TRANSCRIPT

 

A Solution For Diverting Business Waste From Landfill

 

Q: How and why did the Industrial Ecology program come to be?

Phil Molyneaux: It started about six months ago. We were looking at this for a long time, trying to think of creative ways to work with businesses. And we set up a program to work with small to medium sized businesses – so, those who were employing up to two-hundred people, but mainly concentrating on those who were employing twenty people in their business, so the small businesses. And they’re notoriously contact; there’s an enormous number of them in New South Wales – there’s something like six hundred and fifty thousand of those in New South Wales alone. There’s a lot of small businesses. And we thought we would like a program looking at opportunities to work with larger businesses as well. And that was where the Industrial Ecology, or the Industrial Symbiosis program came about.

Q: Can you give our audience more on an idea of what exactly is the program, and how it runs?

PM: The program is about…we’re paying for facilitators who have a background and an understanding of local areas to work with local businesses and help local businesses to fin creative solutions for their waste. So what we’re doing is we’re paying for a person, called a facilitator, to work in a local area, and we split the state up into six regions – relatively arbitrary regions – and we’re working with the facilitators, providing funding and providing assistance to them to work with local businesses.

So what they would do is they would hold meetings in their regions and identify businesses that want to work to reduce their cost of waste disposal. In New South Wales there’s a levy on materials going to landfill; the government tries to encourage recycling, and one way of doing that is to put a levy on the tonnes of material going into landfill, and that is about one hundred and twenty dollars per tonne – and then the waste industry themselves have a gate fee. So, someone estimated that in Sidney, and the capital cities, the cost of putting material into landfill is something in the order of about three hundred and fifty dollars a tonne, with transport costs included.

That means it’s quite expensive to put material into landfill, but some businesses feel that that’s just the cost of doing business, and they’ll keep doing it. But what we’re trying to say is that the New South Wales government is working with businesses to try to encourage them to recycle that material, and therefore avoid much of that cost of disposal.

Q: What’s the timeline of the project – how long are you planning for it to go on for?

PM: We would like to keep it going for four years. We’re sort of half way, or a third of the way through the first year of the program. Our hope is to be able to suggest to the facilitators we’re working with – that we’ve trained and encouraged and supported – and encourage them to continue to do this work themselves, because they will have had the skills and experience, and see that there’s an opportunity for them to make money.

One of the people who is advising us in this program has said that he’s been doing industrial ecology, or industrial symbiosis, for a number of years himself and he says to businesses: “I can find a way to save you a hundred thousand dollars a year on your waste bill, are you prepared to pay me half of that?” And a number of companies have said to him, “Yes, sure we can do that”. So, at the end of the financial year he gets his check for fifty thousand dollars and is quite happy.

And that’s where we think a number of these people who have been trained in these regions – with skills and connections in those regions…because it’s local regions. We’re such a big state that there isn’t the money to move this waste from one section of New South Wales to another. It’s best if the local region deals with that waste in the best way – and it’s relatively expensive to transport these materials: food waste is heavy, timber waste is really quite heavy.

 

The Businesses And Organisations Participating.

 

Q: What kind of organisations or businesses are you looking to work with, and what qualities to the facilitators need to have?

PM: There are criteria, and we were very careful when we gave the original grants out. We were looking at companies that had a track record of working with local businesses; innovative in looking at recycling options; skills in leadership – we’re looking for a particular type of person who’s going to be the facilitator, and that person has to have a certain amount of charm, a bit of an ability to hold meetings and to network with people, and to be persistent.

So a lot of the time, how they’ll go about it is they’ll have a meeting in one of the small cities around the state. They’ll talk a bit about the idea of recycling and mention a couple of success stories of local businesses that are recovering, say, timber pallets or food waste in a region, and they’ll perhaps get one of the people doing this to talk. And they’ll say, “can we sit down and chat with you about that idea”. And they’ll give them a cup of coffee, get them to come back after a few minutes of networking, and they basically sit down with all the people interested in timber waste sitting down at one table, and the people interested in food waste or recycling plastic or metals and the like, sit down at separate tables and network together.

Then, the facilitator will try and gather that information and try to encourage those people that have been networking – someone who has food waste and wants to find someone who can use that food waste (maybe someone who is a local composter, or someone who has a farm and can take that food waste and it’s lawful for them to take that food waste), and then we assist those two to get together. And sometimes it’s just a case that they’re just down the street from each other, and they didn’t realise that both existed, or both had that need. Or, we need to organise some sort of transport between them. So it’s a case of negotiating, and it really takes someone with some skills and persistence: people are busy, people have always wanted to do this, but they’ve just never had someone to facilitate that connection.

Q: So the want is there, we just need to make it happen…

PM: That’s exactly right.

 

Goals and Outcomes: What Impact Will Industrial Ecology Have?

 

Q: Can you tell me then what are the core outcomes expected of the program?

PM: Good comment. Well, we’re going to invest four million dollars over the four years of the program, and we would like to see (and we’ve got some numbers to indicate this is quite possible) a return of something like twenty one million dollars in initial income or savings for the community. We’d like to target one hundred and sixty thousand tonnes of landfill diversion. We’re well on the way – of the first four months of the program, we’ve certainly seen a significant targeting of several thousand tonnes of material.

Q: What is the business case for the program?

PM: Well, the business case is that idea that there is a saving for business; there is a responsibility in government to reduce the amount of material that is being sent to landfill; there is a responsibility in government to reduce litter and waste, and to encourage business to be more efficient and competitive in an international market. And obviously, the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority has a desire and a responsibility to stop productive material from being wasted, and see that material return to the proactive economy – that’s our chief objective. But we also see that it’s going to be of benefit to business efficiency in the economy. And we’re already seeing benefits in our society of a cleaner environment, and environment where there’s less litter, less material going to landfill. Even though we have a large area, landfill space is very valuable, particularly in the cities that land can be sold and used very well if it’s not being used for a landfill.

Q: Have you any notion on how businesses are taking to the program so far? Is it popular, or are there any challenges to getting them interested?

PM: I think it’s like a lot of things with the environment and with businesses, you know – it’s always tough for businesses to keep their heads about water and keep going. Everyone’s trying to be more competitive and everyone’s trying to save some money. They often don’t consider their waste as a way of saving money; they often think that waste is just something they need to get out of the way so that they can get on with the business of doing business. So, they accept that waste is a cost of doing business, and what we like to say to them is: well, maybe we can pull this area apart a little bit, have a look at this idea, and maybe there’s significant saving in reducing the amount of material going to landfill.

And then the other benefit we’ve found with a number of companies is…you know, we started on this track a couple of years ago, thinking that were just going to save money. But the bosses have come back to us and said they’re really excited because staff are more engaged  and interested. We’re doing something in our business that we haven’t done before: we’re recycling at work and doing the things we’ve been regularly doing at home with our bins. We separate our dry recyclables at home, some have got compost bins, some have worm farms…  and they’re saying, “It’s really exciting, we’re doing something different at work!” And they’re motivated.

One company came to us and said to us that they were just so excited that it significantly reduced staff turnover, and to him that saving is just amazing because his staff were continually leaving. Not because there wasn’t anything bad about the company, but it just wasn’t really interesting. He’s saying, “Now we’ve got a much more interesting environment, my staff are engaged. We’re almost got to zero waste…they’re very excited, they’re very keen to come to work and try something different”.

 

Changing Hearts & Minds: Challenges Along The Way

 

Q: What kind of issues or challenges have you had so far, and how are you overcoming them?

PM: The thing that’s tricky is just the perception that businesses have: “You’re asking me to do something about my waste, but I’m asking my staff to change their habits. This could be a little bit more expensive that just sending the material to landfill…” And we’re trying to say to them, “Look, why don’t you just try that?” So, we’ve been tackling that by encouraging managers and facilitators to talk with the staff, and to look at the fact that they are recycling at home; they’ve been asked for a number of years by the New South Wales government to recycle material in their municipal bins, and they’ve been doing that very successfully. And we point to the real cost savings, and just encourage people to look at this as a social responsibility.

A number of companies respond to that. Not all – but there’s a certain politics of envy, when someone’s done it well other companies come along and say, “well, I think we could have a go at that”. And it’s always good to see someone who’s been successful in this area and likes to get up and say, “Well, we did this. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t all that hard, and we had a lot of fun on the way.” And a number of companies get up and say that.

Q: And I suppose the landfill levy that you have has really helped in getting businesses on board?

PM: It has. It’s certainly a driver in New South Wales. The levy operates in the major cities – in the country areas the levy doesn’t operate all that much. But in the cities, another big driver is the cost of transport, whereas in country areas you don’t have that cost of travelling around the city and spending time in clogged arteries.

In country areas the cost of doing things are significantly reduced, but there may not be as many opportunities. So, that’s what we’re finding the challenge is in country areas. They don’t have the population, they don’t have the number of reuse opportunities, but then again they don’t have the costs that are associated with a city operation.

Q: I see, so that is a bit trickier then to work with?

PM: It is a bit tricky, but what we’re arguing is that there are opportunities in both situations. There are a number of companies that are prepared to work, because they’ve got lower overheads in country areas, land is not as expensive. They want to keep staff, they’re looking at opportunities to reduce their costs, and recycling is a reasonable option.

Q: And looking at the future now briefly, what’s the long-term vision for the EPA in New South Wales after the completion of the program?

PM: We’re doing work on a succession plan for this. Basically, instead of supplying the fishing line, we’ve decided to go with the model of teaching people how to fish. And we’ve really worked at encouraging, with our facilitators, to take up this challenge, and to work with local people in their community; develop strong connections in their community, and look for local solutions.

 

Industrial Ecology – Can We Take It Globally?

 

Q: How do you think this program could be replicated in other countries around the world – would it be vastly different in another context?

PM: Yeah, I think it would. We’ve shamelessly borrowed a program from the UK that’s been highly successful: the National Symbiosis Program, or NISP. And we feel that it’s a simple, transferable model. A number of people we’ve spoken to in the UK have given us an indication of how they’ve done it; we’ve spoken to a number of people who have visited the UK. And what they basically do is what we’ve tried to apply, that is: you talk with a number of businesses in a local community, you try and identify opportunities, and you make sure you work with the willing – don’t try and drive people to work with you if they don’t want to do that – and, you look at creative opportunities with those willing people.

You just persist with those people and look for ways to do it. Sometimes it’s fairly tenuous or timorous and takes a little bit of time for that to work out. But once people start to see that this is possible to do, and there’s an opportunity to do it, they start to realise that this is quite good.

We had a meeting with our team facilitators the other day, and several of them said, “Do you know, I didn’t know how we were going to do this. I was a bit scared at the start. But you know, there’s some great opportunities out there – and I’m having a lot of fun!”

Q: Well that I’m sure is a big plus!

PM: It is! It is.

 

Creating Jobs & Building Sustainable Societies.

 

Q: Often times recycling initiatives have a great opportunity to create jobs. With this program, can you see jobs being created for local communities or?

PM: Look, certainly. I think there are opportunities to create jobs, but there’s probably more opportunities to save jobs from leaving an area. Obviously as technology changes, businesses tend to move people out of dangerous jobs and to reduce the workload, and obviously increased mechanisation has reduced the number of jobs. A way to meet that challenge is to provide better jobs, safer jobs. And there are some great jobs in recycling and opportunities in recovery. There are some estimates of quite significant savings in local areas through people who will recycle the material rather than see it go to landfill, and see that material return to the productive economy, rather than see it just sitting in a landfill.

Q: In relation to the Industrial Ecology program, do you see any opportunities that it could bring to empower disadvantaged groups in society?

PM: It’s a good question, and it’s interesting to see that there are opportunities to work in community groups. One of the regions is working with refugees and supplying them with organic material so that they’re growing their own food in a community situation, and that’s very exciting. So, there are some opportunities – a number of organisations are working with them at the moment and looking at opportunities to work in that space.

We find that, as with in all communities, a lot of disadvantaged groups move towards the lower cost areas and that often tends to be outside the cities, and that’s where a lot of recycling opportunities might be. And it’s an opportunity work; it’s certainly an opportunity where some of the disabled groups have thought, “well, let’s use staff to do that”, and a number of disabled groups are using leftover timber from manufacturing to make items.

It’s got to be thought-through very carefully, and there are some opportunities there if it’s done well.

Q: Do you have any final words about the program or to businesses out there who might be interested in becoming part of something like this?

PM: I think the idea is looking. Just go out the back of your building or their manufacturing site, or their business, and look over the fence and see if there’s somebody that could use something that you’re throwing away. So have a look what’s in your bin, and have a look at what other people are using. There are a number of companies that have said, “I didn’t realise that people were buying these boxes that I’m throwing away”, or, “Someone could use these plastic bags that I’ve just been putting in the bin”. And there’s some great opportunities to share, and to see waste as a resource rather than something that needs to be thrown away.

Megacities Special #1: Rolling Out A Residential Organics Collection Program In NYC

This episode corresponds to Lesson 4 and Lesson 5 of our online course.

In this episode we take an in depth look into the expanding organics collection and composting program in New York City. We speak with Bridget Anderson, director of the Recycling Unit of the DSNY’s Bureau of Waste Prevention, in order to understand the unique situation that a megacity faces when rolling out such a program, the logistics and strategies for setting up the scheme, challenges in dealing with different building types, managing the collected organic material, and the vision they have for the future.

Thank you to IPL for making this episode possible

IPL is a leading North American manufacturer of injection-molded plastic products. The commercial success of products and technologies often depends on innovation, and IPL specialise in providing added value and expertise for all your projects. Their unique and innovative processes are tailored to design, develop, and deliver the best solutions for their valued customers. For more, visit their website.

Picture curtesy of DSNY.

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TRANSCRIPT

The Story So Far

 

Q: Can you tell me how the program got started?

BA: Organics collection was a pilot that actually started in the schools, in the 2012-2013 school year. We started on a select number of schools and focused on school cafeterias and school kitchens; and it was really an effort that was spearheaded by a number of parent-teacher organisations. They did a great job and Sanitation saw what they did and decided that we would try in on a slightly larger scale.

Then there was momentum to try this in residences also – in homes. And we’re in all five boroughs: we have pilot areas in the Bronx, in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island – and then in Manhattan, which is a very dense area with lots of high-rise apartment buildings, we actually have selected apartment buildings that have volunteered to participate in the program. One of the challenges is to figure out how to do this in high rise buildings.

Q: How does the pilot program operate today? It is a voluntary program at the moment, correct?

BA: Yes, the pilot is voluntary. We chose the pilot areas in a combination of where, collection-wise, we thought it would work well operationally, and where there was interest among residents and among elected officials. We also looked for those low-density areas. So, it was voluntary and not everybody in the pilot areas chooses to participate, but everyone is given the opportunity.

We deliver a brown bin, which is what you set out curbside, and then in addition we deliver a kitchen container for each household, so that you have something you can use in the kitchen to collect the material. And then we provide a lot of education and outreach, and brochures…

What we do is we send a mailer to everyone in the pilot area, saying “this program is coming, this is what it is and you can expect to receive your brown bin”. Then about a week before the brown bin arrives, we do a door hanger. We go door-to-door and hang a door hanger and say “Your brown bag is arriving this week. As a reminder this is the program, it’s voluntary, we hope you participate, and this is how it works”. And then when the brown bin arrives, in that brown bin is the kitchen container and the brochure that gives details about what can and can’t be put in the bin – best practices for how to manage the material.

Q: I also saw just the other day that the Mayor of New York and his family made an ad using the brown bin…

BA: Yeah, it’s interesting, they approached us. One of the pilot areas is where the mayor’s home is – this is the mayor’s home before he moved to Gracie Mansion, which is the official Mayor home. He actually approached Sanitation and said “I would love to do a video. My daughter Chiara is very interested in this program”. And so, we developed a script for them, which they took and then tweaked, and they created the video. And the video turned out beautifully – I thought it was a great video. And now they’ve moved to Gracie Mansion, and we had the organics collection program in Gracie Mansion with Mayor Bloomberg, and now we’re continuing it with Mayor de Blasio, so we’re very excited about that.

 

 

LOGISTICS of COLLECTING organic waste in New York City

 

Q: I want to ask you about the expansion on the program to high-rise buildings, because as you said earlier they can be quite a challenge. How did the DSNY decide to deal with all the different types of buildings?

BA: There are other cities in the United States that already do this organics collection program – cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Toronto in Canada – and we looked at what they were doing, where they found success. Most of those cities are lower density and don’t have as many high-rise buildings. Toronto is maybe the closest to New York City in comparison to a place that already does organics collection. And we thought, let’s try this program in the lower density areas of the city – because that’s where there’s been a precedence set to have a successful program in other cities. So, we looked for parts of the city where we would focus on single family homes and small apartment buildings that are up to nine units – little town houses, brownstones, and then small apartment buildings. The pilot areas are primarily that size of building.

Then we said, if we’re going to make this a viable program, we have to tackle high-rise apartment buildings, because a significant portion of New York City’s recycling, you have to come up with an internal recycling program that then allows the building to manage the waste and get it out on the curb for Sanitation to collect. We have to do the same thing for organic material. So, we actually work with the building management and the co-op board, if it’s a co-op building, and come up with a system for how they’ll manage the organic waste inside the building to then get it out on the curb for us to collect

Q: And how many high-rises are you working with at the moment?

BA: We have over a hundred high-rises at this point.

Q: That’s quite a few. And what has been the DSNY’s strategy in dealing with the various building types? Do you have separate systems, depending on the high rise, or is there a single system that works across the board?

BA: I would say we service a different range of types of buildings – we have old, old buildings, we have brand new Leed certified buildings…a lot of it depends on the infrastructure of the building, where there’s space to put the bins. It’s very similar to recycling – where is there space to place the bins, either on each floor or in some sort of centralised area, where people can then bring their material to drop it off. And then the building staff brings it out to the curb.

So we have a few different strategies that are the most common. One is, if our large buildings tend to have chute where people will take their trash, and it foes down to the basement. In a lot of buildings there’s a little chute room where the chute exists. And if there’s space on each floor, and the building management are willing to provide the service, we recommend that both the recycling and the organics containers are put in those shoot rooms on every floor. It’s the most convenient for the residents.

That doesn’t exist in all buildings, so what’s also quite common is a centrallsed location on the first floor, possibly the basement or in the area nearby where there’s parking, where the recycling and organics bins are placed. And that’s more of a centralised area. It’s less work for the Super to service, because it’s only location – but it’s potentially a little bit less convenient for the residents because they have to go downstairs. We find with both recycling and organics collection, convenience begets participation. So if it’s easy and convenient, people will participate. The people who want to do it are going to do it no matter where you place your collection location; the people who are saying “well I’ll do it if it’s convenient.” If it’s easy for me to just throw it down the chute on my floor that to bring the organic material or recycling downstairs, then you may lose a few people in participation.

So, we have a lot of signage – signage is absolutely key to let people know on every floor where the collection location is in the building. And keeping the collection well lit, safe, secure is also key to having people comfortable with using those locations in the building.

Q: Another crucial part in organics collection programs is the collection times. How did you decide on collection times and are they different from place to place?

BA: We have a few different strategies. About fifty-thousand of the households are being offered twice a week collection, and that’s the same frequency as refuse collection. The idea is you just set out your material on collection day, but you separate the organic material from the waste and recycling. In the other half of the homes, we’re testing once a week collection. Basically, the way things work is that here you have twice a week collection of trash, once a week collection of recycling in most parts of the city, and so we’re either offering twice a week collection on the same frequency as trash collection, and the other half od the pilot, we’re offering once a week collection on recycling day. So, it’s essentially just another recycling stream to set out on your recycling day.

Q: Do you know which one is more successful, or which you’re going to pick in the long-run?

BA: We have one area of Brooklyn, where we started them in the Fall with once a week collection and switched them to twice a week collection in May, so we’re going to be studying that one. We don’t have any results yet, but we’re hopeful that that little neighbourhood – it’s called Windsor Terrace – will actually help inform us what the effect is of twice a week versus once a week.

Q: Was it difficult, in a city the size of New York, to plan collection routes and to cooperate with the haulers?

BA: So in New York City, the city actually has a municipal hauling workforce and we collect material from residences, agencies and institutions. And so, it was simply a matter of making the case to add some to add trucks in the budget to service the same routes. And we chose the pilot areas so they were co-terminus: they were the same areas as the regular routes, so there was no issue there. People were very positive about piloting the program.

Q: The ultimate goal is to make this a mandatory, city-wise curbside composting program. How are you planning to get there?

BA: The city council passed a law for us to conduct this pilot program, and the our mandate is a two-year program. And in the October of 2015, we will have to present a report to city council and say, this is how the pilot went, these are our recommendations moving forward. And so far we feel pretty positive about the participation, about people’s understanding of the program. We’re working right now to evaluate the pilot to understand what the best practices, what are the best collection frequency, what are the other aspects of the program that we’d want to take and scale up.

Scaling up city-wide is going to take quite a while. It’s not going to happen overnight; it will have to be a phase-in process. And part of it too is that what happens is if you separate the organic material and recycling fully, you don’t have as much refuse left. So, one of the big pieces is understanding how we reconfigure our routine and our truck routes so that we manage the material differently. So, maybe we don’t need as many refuse routes because there’s not as much refuse being set out as we add the organics routes.

So there’s a lot of operation pieces that we have to put into play. There’s also the aspect of geography – do we roll out district by district, which is maybe what happens. So, we’re basically in the planning process right now as we roll out the pilot, to figure out how we would do this city-wise, and I would say that it’s going to take ten years to probably get to the entire city.

Q: We tackle this whole aspect of organics collection programs in Lesson 4 of our online course on Compostory.org, so those of you listening, can go straight to the course on our site and take a deeper look at.

 

 

COMMUNITY COMPOSTING – A Critical Piece to the Puzzle

 

And now, I’d like to touch on the topic of community composting, because in our last episode, we were taking a look at the community composting movement in New York and we know that the DSNY has been quite involved in supporting this as well. Can you tell me a little about how you work with community composters in the city?

BA: Yes, we have a longstanding relationship – over twenty years – working with community composters. The New York City Compost Project is a group that we run and fund, and we have non-profit partners throughout the city where we provide education services – helping people to understand how to compost in your backyard, if you want to take your yard waste or your food scraps and do it yourself. We work with community gardens, and we provide finished compost from the material that they city collects and manages, and we provide tools and equipment, and technical advice for how to set up composting in community gardens.

We also work to provide drop-off programs. We have food scrap drop off programs throughout the city – we’ve about seventy in operation right now. And those drop-off programs are critical, because they get people in the mindset of “oh! this is what this is…I take my food scraps and I can bring them somewhere else and recycle it – have it be composted.” So, we see the community composters as absolutely critical to helping people understand the concepts of organic separation, what happens to it, what are the benefits to it – it’s an absolutely critical piece to the puzzle.

Q: So you agree with David Buckle, who we interviewed last week, that community composting is an essential part of creating a successful organics recycling system?

BA: Both programs are very important, yes.

Q: When speaking to David, it was clear that he had concerns about a lack of vision from policy makers in the city, that might not understand the importance of local collection and composting and wouldn’t necessarily prioritize community composting over other collection systems. What’s your take on this statement – have you seen this yourself?

BA: I actually have not seen that. We’re trying to position the city, in terms of organics waste collection, to fulfill a number of goals, and community composting plays an extremely important role in terms of introducing the community to organics and composting and the concept that you can recycle this other part of the waste stream, and to showing what actually happens to your organic waste, how it turns into compost; and creating a valuable product for the local communities.

The capacity for local, small-scale community composting is too small to handle the vast hundred and thousands of tons of material that we’re looking to divert through organics recycling. So, we as a city also have a parallel mission to find how we bring composting to scale and actually move major tonnage of material to recycling, to composting and to renewable energy. So, for us we see both as extremely important, because the local community composting creates beneficial use for the city. They have been critical to introduce the concept that this is a useful strategy but it’s not going to help us divert all of the waste. There’s so much waste in New York City, that we don’t think we’d be able to handle it through community composting. You have to have large, permitted facilities to really handle that quantity of material.

But there’s plenty of material to go around, and absolutely – this is why we fund local community composting operations – we see it as a critical piece to the pie, a piece to the puzzle.

We’re really focusing on [understanding] how we create this as a cooperative program. But it’s really tough, I mean, you have people who’ve been in the trenches for two decades working on local community composting, and I understand that maybe there’s a fear that if the city takes over this program that there won’t be a place for local community composting, and we do not at all see that as the case. They are both critical to achieving the city’s overall goal, which is diverting major tonnage of material, and creating beneficial use for local communities.

 

 

Compost Use & Compost Markets

 

Q: If the program is rolled out city-wide, you will have a lot of compost on your hands. What are you planning to do with the compost and what are you currently doing with it?

BA: We take the material from the pilot to local and regional compost facilities. With the material that’s taken to the regional facilities, we don’t actually take back the compost at this point. There may be a situation moving forward where we develop a relationship where we would have a certain percentage of the compost come back. With the material that’s processed locally, we turn it into compost and use it in street trees, we use it in parks, we use it in gardens. We have give-back programs for non-profits, schools and community groups, to use the compost for their greening projects. We also create a mulch product in addition to compost. And most of the material that we’re currently compost locally is yard waste, and that creates a beautiful mulch product as well as the compost. We also sell the compost to landscapers, so we do have a small revenue stream there.

Q: Are you involved in creating markets for compost, or encouraging market growth for compost?

BA: For the material we compost locally, we’ve worked on this landscaper market, and it’s really a bulk purchase type of situation. We have not gotten into the business of creating a retail market for the material – it just hasn’t been necessary to date, because we’re handling and selling all the material with the landscapers and with our give-back programs. With the regional composting facilities that are taking the material during the pilot period, we have not been involved in how they’re marketing the material, although we are evaluating with them the quality of the material we’re giving them, and the quality of the material that comes out, so we understand better what it is we can create from the material that would come out of a New York City stream.

Q: What is the quality like, and what contamination rate are you experiencing?

BA: The quality is quite good. In the residential program, our contamination rate is very, very low. It’s well below five percent. So we feel very good about that. It is a voluntary program, so the people who participate want to participate and try to do it right. That may change obviously when you make it mandatory.

Q: Is creating a market for compost something you’re looking at doing in the future?

BA: It would definitely be part of our larger plan. We want to ensure that the material is going to beneficial use – and is not just composting; we’re also looking into anaerobic digestion so we can create energy from the material. But creating a viable program, if there’s a way to generate revenue from it, that’s obviously a huge benefit, so it’s definitely something we’ll be looking into.

Q: Yes indeed, and we just released a new lesson – Lesson 5 – of our course were we take a detailed look at market creation for compost as well. And in terms of your aims or objectives with the organic material – as you said, diverting materials from landfill and supporting communities are on your list. But what about the organic material itself and what it’s used for? Are you focused solely on creating revenue streams, with waste-to-energy for example, or are you more concerned with creating quality compost to help replenish the soil?

BA: One of our biggest objectives is to find ways to reduce the material going to landfill, and the parallel objective is to create beneficial use. And obviously as a city we are concerned about being cost-effective in what we do, so any opportunities we have to market material and gain revenue streams is important. We are focused primarily at this point on the composting, because that’s a proven technology; we know there are existing facilities, we know that a useful product can be created and marketed.

Anaerobic digestion is a little bit newer of a technology for us in the North-East. There are wastewater treatment plants that have been using anaerobic digestion for a long time, and the question is: how viable is it to utilise AD for a municipal organics program? What we’ve learned is that the challenges are when you co-mingle food waste and yard waste, and food soiled paper, that can cause problems with anaerobic digestion, and so we’re trying to figure out if those energy conversion technologies (such as anaerobic digestion), could be viable with our waste stream. We won’t be able to collect yard waste separately from food waste, we really need the efficiency of collection to collect it all together , and so the question is: is there an option to utilise anaerobic digestion with that type of material streams.

On the commercial side, with businesses, we expect it’ll be food waste. So we think that there’s quite a good opportunity there for turning food into renewable energy through anaerobic digestion. But on the residential side, we think it may be more difficult.

Q: So you’re going to stick with composting, which is probably the most ideal option on many fronts.

BA: Yes. The challenges there of course is that you need a lot of space for composting – there are siting issues. For New York City, siting any new facility is expensive and difficult. There’s permitting processes, and because we’re right the confluence of three different states, each state has their own permitting requirements and procedures.

 

 

Closing the Loop

 

Q: And for our listeners who are rolling out similar programs, we strongly recommend fully integrating the multiple benefits of compost use in the program vision. Keeping organics out of a landfill and managing the waste streams is important – and it’s usually the main argument to be had in large cities – but then programs need to take into account all the benefits of compost use as well when developing operations. We’re finding out that many programs need to put more focus on end-product quality. So there’s a whole ecosystem involved here and it goes beyond just the ‘waste management’ side of things, so it’s very important to include that in the program vision.

And so Bridget, in terms of closing the loop as much as possible do you travel far to the composting sites you use, or?

BA: We have one composting facility on Staten Island, and that’s a great system. So, all the material that we collect on Staten Island, stays on Staten Island, so that’s a very closed-loop and successful system. For the other material that we have, everything is within a hundred miles of the city, but we do have to truck it outside the city. And so, we basically say it’s regional capacity. And we’re hopeful that once we position ourselves to go to scale, that we will be able to work with companies who will local themselves closer to New York City.

 

 

Organic Waste COLLECTION in A MEGACITY: Successes and Advice

 

Q: The project has been a great success so far and it’ll be exciting to see how it progresses, but already you’ve gained a lot of experience and tackled a host of issues. I’d love to know more about the pitfalls and successes you’ve experienced on your journey so far. How has it been?

BA: Yeah, so one of the best things that has happened is that we found these local resident champions of the program, and they are the best sales people. Having peer-to-peer interactions where people are explaining to their neighbours how great the program is, how little trash they have left, and how easy it is, has been incredibly helpful. And we found that it takes a lot of work, but the in-person interactions that we have as a program with the residents is really the most effective way to get people who may be a little bit shy, nervous or intimidated on board.

We get a lot of questions and concerns about rodents and pests, and they say it’ll be more work. Well, we say it’s the same amount of waste that you’re throwing out now, you’re just putting it in a separate bin. And the bin that we have has a lid and a latch, and so we’re able to explain to people that it actually reduces the potential for pest issues because you’re containing that waste. Right now New York City has primarily a bag program, so material is placed out at the curb in bags, and when you have a plastic bag, it’s much easier for a rat to chomp into the back and access the food. If the food is in a container, it’s much more difficult for them to access that meal. So we’re working with the Department of Health to study how the rodent populations are affected by the program.

We’ve also had some people say there’s been fruit flies and maggots, and those sorts of things. And it’s amazing because we use social media a lot in the program, and we often have residents providing best practices and tips to the people who have concerns about fruit flies and maggots before we even get to them. So, we have a list of best practices and tips, but we really do rely also on that peer-to-peer education.

Q: And finally, for our audience who might be wondering how to start a similar program in other large cities around the world, what advice would you give for rolling out a system like this in a large city?

BA: I would say that you need to have a plan for where you’re going to take the material. Don’t set up the front-end without the back-end in place – that’s critical. I would say the best way to roll-out the program is to do it so it follows the existing collection schedules and the existing behaviour patterns of people – so we said “add this to the recycling bay, they’re already setting out recycling” or “have them set it out on the same days as trash”. That way the behaviour is sort of the same, it’s just that you’re separating out the material.

The stakeholder engagement has been critical, so speaking with the elected officials and getting them on board – they can be your best advocates in their districts. We found that not only the elected officials, but the local civic organisations have been critical. You have these informal mayors of neighbourhoods that really understand the neighbourhood and understand what messaging will work in that neighbourhood; is this a neighbourhood that will respond better to the fact that we’re trying to save taxpayer money? Is this a neighbourhood that will respond better to the environmental message? That’s been critical for us to target our education and our messaging.