Going Green: Keeping garbage out of the garbage
Julie Fortier, Ottawa Business Journal
March 28, 2007
Anyone who has been to Parliament Hill for Canada Day celebrations will know the crunch of thousands upon thousands of plastic water bottles and cups underfoot. Shockingly, most of the trash left over from large events such as Canada Day gets tossed into the garbage for cost effectiveness and ease of labour.
Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest is one of Ottawa's largest annual events, with approximately 270,500 attendees at the height of summer in 2006. That's a lot of plastic bottles and cups for thirsty patrons. In fact, Bluesfest went through 200,000 beer cups alone in 2006. When looking into implementing a recycling program, organizers quickly realized that the city does not provide any help for event planners to dispose of their garbage in an environmentally-friendly way.
In order to reduce the number of cups making it to the landfill, executive director Mark Monahan secured a shipment of compostable beer cups from Molson, employed Bluesfest volunteer and Blue Heron Solutions director Daniel Spence to design receptacles to hold the cups and deployed a crack team of "green" volunteers to spread the word at the 10-day event. The OBJ asked him if the program was a success.
OBJ: What did you do to recycle more at BluesFest?
MONAHAN: Last year was the first year we made a concerted effort to have a green program for the festival. It was prompted by the public. We had feedback from patrons asking us what we would be doing in regards to different recycling programs. It's also a commitment of ours to minimize waste that we have at the festival.
The major initiative we had last year was to use a compostable beer cup. We were able to source these beer cups that were made of corn. Second we had to determine how we were going to deal with them on site. What we did was we came up with an invention that would separate the beer cups from the rest of the garbage because they had to be brought to a compost site as opposed to a landfill. Essentially, we were able to capture 85 to 90 per cent of the beer cups that were given out onsite and bring them to a composter.
OBJ: What made you decide to do that?
MONAHAN: In the fall of '05, we initially met with some people in the community. We met with Arbour Environmental Shop and some other volunteers who were interested in making it a more green festival. The first thing we did was determine what our biggest contributor to the landfill was and what could we do to minimize that. It was obvious that it was the beer cups. All of them were going to the landfill. We decided to see what we could do. Then we got Molson involved, one of our major sponsors. Then we recruited a bunch of volunteers who were interested in getting involved with the project.
One of our volunteers came up with a contraption that fit on the edge of a garbage can and we were able to stack the beer cups that way. People dropped the cups into a cylinder and the volunteers picked those up during the course of the day. We figure that we saved the equivalent of five 30-yard bins that would have gone to the landfill. We realized that by stacking these cups, it took up one-tenth of the space than if they were just thrown into the dumpster. We brought them to a compost site out in Greely and they were mixed in with other compost where it breaks down rather fast.
OBJ: Did it cost any more than what you used before?
MONAHAN: Molson provided the cups and from the success they had with our festival, they are planning on rolling it out to other events in the future. Forgetting about the manpower because it was run by volunteers, it was actually a cost saving initiative for us. We didn't have to pay for as many bins being sent to the landfill.
OBJ: Why do you think other festival organizers haven't done this as well?
MONAHAN: It is very labour intensive to do it on the scale that we have here. It requires a lot of advanced planning and it takes a major commitment on the part of the volunteers. The other reason is that people's initial reaction is that it is going to cost them more money. We have proven that it doesn't, but I do think initially people think this may end us costing us more.
Another factor is that the city really doesn't have a policy to help events like this. I think on a higher level they want to help, but they have no assistance to offer. For instance, last year in sourcing recycling bins, we asked the city to lend us recycling bins and they said no. They said they didn't have anything like that. So we asked if we could have our recycling taken away with theirs and they said no. They were all in favour of encouraging us to recycle, but they have absolutely nothing to offer. It was up to us, which was fine. But in order to get other events to buy into recycling, they have to not pay lip service and rather say to organizers, "This is something we can help you do."
OBJ: Are there any new initiatives for the future?
MONAHAN: In '07 our plan is to institute a recycling program. We would be recycling any kind of items that would be given out on site. Any kind of plastic, glass, (we will be) minimizing anything that goes to the landfill. We are also sourcing items that will be acceptable for vendors to use so we will have restrictions on what people can give out or serve their food on at the festival. The plan is for those items to be recyclable or minimize how much of it gets thrown away.
*snip*
THE EXPERTS SAY
Primarily we produce and market Cupsuckers (tubes to stack used cups for disposal), but we also provide greening solutions for large events and festivals in the Ottawa area. We provide services that deal with waste management and energy efficiency, working with a volunteer-based organization to maximize resources and reduce their ecological footprint.
Last year, I co-ordinated Bluesfest's "Green Team" volunteers. They provided information on how to use the Cupsuckers as well as emptying the recycle bins and Cupsuckers as they got full. They also provided outreach and information as to what was available at the festival and the less obvious environmental initiatives taking place at the festival. For instance we worked with the Ottawa Community Gardens Network to pick up all the compostables produced by the volunteer BBQ every night. So the members of the Community Garden Network would come by with bins and collect all of the scraps left over and use them for compost. That had a pretty big impact.
There aren't a lot of initiatives coming from the city. There's a lot of ideas and policy in documents that never get funded so staff are confined by budget constraints. They might be in long-term plan, but they never end up happening. The fact is that environmental policies do need investments and funding and if that's not coming from the city, they just won't happen. Festivals do want to have environmentally-sound polices but if they don't have any more money than they had the year before – or less – then they can't roll out these new initiatives.
Daniel Spence, director of Blue Heron Solutions
Wal-mart announced that it will use compostable plastics in many of its packaging and that has been the big push. Natureworks, who makes the material (polylactic acid) had been trying to promote the product for some time. Prior to the Wal-Mart initiative, it was more a niche market for natural or organic food suppliers. Certainly now there is a lot more interest. I have just heard that the capacity for that particular resin is maxed out and all sold so those interested in it cannot place orders. They have to expand their production.
There are things that people should know about this material. It has poor vapour-barrier qualities and it's not very good at keep oxygen from going into your bottle. They also have some thermal-stability issues as well. They tend to deform under higher heat. However, the cups are ideal because they are one-time use and for cold liquids.
There also has to be very specific collection for these PLA materials. They have to be brought into composting conditions. With the right temperatures, the polylactic acid will break down into small pieces and once they are small enough, micro-organisms in the soil will start to eat it as food. If you place these into a landfill there isn't enough heat or microbes to break it down. If you try to recycle these, they will contaminate the process. So, we also have to make sure that these won't get into our recycling systems.
Carol Zweep, manager of packaging services, Guelph Food Technology Centre
