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Stadium Recycling Transcript
Highlights
Introduction
Justin Crane: Good afternoon, and welcome to today’s internet web seminar on stadium recycling. This seminar is sponsored by the EPA’s RCC Web Academy Recycling and Solid Waste Management Educational series. I am Justin Crane, with MDB Incorporated, a support contractor to the EPA and I will be handling the technical aspects of today’s seminar. The seminar will be moderated by Judy Taylor. Judy is the team leader of the EPA’s Recycle On The Go initiative and has worked on recycling and waste prevention issues at the EPA for the past 17 years. 40 sec While we wait for others to log on, I would like to cover a few housekeeping items. By now you should have the Go To Webinar application running and should see the welcome presentation on your screen. If you have technical difficulties using Go To Webinar, you can go to www.gotowebinar.com and click on Support and Frequently Asked Questions in the upper left hand corner of the page. If you are not able to use the Go To Webinar application to view the presentation, it can be downloaded from the RCC Web Academy webpage. For those of you joining us via the phone lines, there may be a short delay of the seminar visuals. Presenters will briefly pause in between slides to compensate for the delay. Also we ask that phone participants please put their phones on mute during the call. The presentation slides will be advanced by the presenter. To ask a question, please use the Go To Webinar control panel and type your question in the area that says “Questions.” Click “Send” to submit it to the moderator. Although we may not have time to answer every question during the seminar, if we don’t respond to questions online, we will email a response later. After today’s seminar, there will be a short survey. Please take a moment to fill out the survey. Your feedback is vital to helping us insure we are providing the highest quality speakers and information to meet your needs.If everyone could just hold on the line for just a few minutes, we will get started Ok, lets get started. Is, um…just let me check really quick that Judy Taylor, the moderator, is online and can hear me. Judy are you there? Ok, we are…looks like we are experiencing technical difficulties with Judy’s audio, so if everyone could just hang on the line just a minute, we will get this straightened out. (silence) Like to thank everyone for their patience as we are getting this worked out. Please stay on the line, we’ll be right with you. Thank you very much. Hello Judy, are you there? Hello everyone, thank you again for your patience, we are just about finished, uh, resolving our technical issues, so if you just hang on, just for a few more minutes, we will get right back with you. Thank you very much. (silence) Ok, sorry once again about the confusion. Um, it seems that we are having some audio-technical difficulties with the moderator’s equipment, so I will go ahead and start the moderator’s script.
Um, once again, I’d like to welcome everyone to the January 2009 edition of the Resource Conservation Challenge Web Academy. We are happy to have you participating. This 90 minute monthly education series is hosted by the US Environmental Protection Agency to provide training and a networking opportunity to state and local governments, non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders. Today’s topic is Stadium Recycling. Stadiums offer large quantities of recyclable materials, such as plastic and aluminum beverage containers, cardboard, glass, paper and food waste. They also provide a great opportunity to educate fans about recycling and its environmental benefits. This webinar describes the recycling program of two successful stadium recycling programs. As you may know, EPA’s Recycle On The Go initiative encourages recycling in public places such as stadiums, convention centers, parks, airports and other transportation hubs, shopping centers, and at special events. We have developed a website with materials to assist facilitators, owners and operators of local and state governments, and others looking to promote recycling in public places. We recently added a report entitled: “Venue Recycling in the USA” that the National Association for PET Container Resources developed under an EPA grant to explore the US and recycling of beverage containers in stadiums and other large venues in the US. We also plan to complete a guide to recycling at stadiums within the next few months. You can find our materials on our Recycle On The Go website www.epa.gov/recycleonthego. Today we have two knowledgeable speakers lined up. After each speaker we will pause and answer questions. We may also have time at the end of the session for your questions. Thanks again for participating, now let’s get started.
Scott's Bio
Scott Jenkins, Vice President of Ballpark Operations of the Seattle Mariners’ Safeco field. Scott will present on recycling operations at Safeco Field. Scott Jenkins is entering his first full season as the Mariners’ Vice President of Ballpark Operations in 2007 after joining the club in 2006. Jenkins is responsible for overseeing the…all aspects of operating and managing Safeco Field. Prior to joining the Mariners, Scott spent the previous three years with the Philadelphia Eagles where he opened and managed Lincoln Financial Field in 2003. From 1997 to 2002, Scott served as VP for Stadium Operations for the Milwaukee Brewers, where he opened Miller Park in 2002. Scott was director and facilitator and… of events for the Athletic Department of the University of Wisconsin, including being involved in the design and construction of the Cole Center, which opened in 1997. A native of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Jenkins graduated from Wisconsin in 1986. While at Wisconsin, Scott was a four-time All-American and a member of the 1982 and 1985 NCAA National Champion Cross Country teams. He resides in Mercer Island, Washington with his wife, Mary, and their children, Andrew, Jacob and Margaret. Um, at this time, we are going to deviate a little. I’m going to turn the time over to Scott, and after which time, we will field questions. I believe the moderator is back on. Um, after questions from Scott, she will introduce the next speaker. So, without further ado, I will turn the time over to Scott. Go ahead Scott, thank you very much
Scott's Presentation
Scott: Alright, thanks, Justin. Let me get this Power Point going here. Alright, uh, I’m going to review briefly what I plan to cover here and probably in the next 20 minutes or so. Hopefully I can share some of our experience that you’ll find helpful, and look forward to getting some questions. Um, first I’m going to talk about establishing the team and the culture that it takes to have a successful recycling program. Um share with you some of our numbers and experience in growing our recycling program here in Seattle and encourage everyone to challenge themselves to recycle more. What we do… talk about what we do with training and promoting to make it a successful program. Uh, talk a little bit about some of our strategies for the 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. And then get into some of the economics on the cost side to recycle and potential savings.Ok, um, the culture. Getting people focused and engaged in recycling is real key because it involves a whole lot of people. On game day there’s, you know, a thousand to two thousand people here working, depending on the game. Um, from folks in the cleaning staff to folks in the concession staff, to our events staff and our fans. And to engage people in recycling, um, I think it’s important to have a culture that you establish of sustainability. So, embedded within our values is one about the environment, um, so we hit that in training at the beginning of the year. And it’s in our handbooks, and we hope it’s something that everyone carries with them as they do their job at the ballpark. Um, we also have collateral materials and signage that we use to promote recycling and in-game entertainment feature. And Captain plastic, that is our recycling mascot that you can see in the left hand corner there that we use. And the key to actually doing this is executing, um, the reducing, the reusing and the recycling. Uh, and then it’s very important to quantify your results so you know how you’re doing. Uh, this screen gives you an idea of what we’ve done. In 2006, we didn’t have a food waste compost program, but we do plastic bottles, we did do paper cardboard and we did do yard waste. And we were recycling at about 18% by weight. And um the savings from that generated about $26,000 in cost avoidance and some rebates. In ’07 we added the food waste program and the picked up a comingled stream of glass and plastic and metal that was coming out of our sweep center food service operations. And, um, we were able to increase our um diversion rate to about 25%. And in ’08, um, we kept this program pretty much the same but focused on executing uh, better, and were able to increase that to about a 31% diversion rate, which generated savings of about $59,000.
Uh, let me switch slides here. Um, how do we do that? Well, training and promoting is key. And I’ll share with you some of our artwork, um posters that we use to educate staff, uh, artwork and signage that we use around the ballpark and on containers, uh, focused at the fans and staff. Use of Captain Plastic. Uh we have a training video that we implemented, uh, that we share with our events staff in our training. And we also show that on some game days to remind people throughout the year as employees are checking in. And it’s also used by our concessionaire to promote our program and educate folks. And then the in-game entertainment piece, uh. We actually do a between inning live shot of Captain Plastic going through the stands and we encourage guests to uh, to help us recycle. I guess I’m going backwards, let me go the other direction here. Um, this is an example of our recycling program poster that we post around the office, um, and again in our handbook and use in our training. Um, it goes through the basics of our recycling program. The office paper containers, um, the bottle shaped container we use in the concourse for plastic bottles, the comingled streams that we generate out of our suites, and also from our kitchen and concession operations. And we try to use blue for that, and a lot of it is blue, to key into that being a recycling stream, as opposed to trash and everyone who’s attempted to implement a recycling program knows how difficult it is to keep the streams clean. Um, cardboard is another important piece of the equation. When we do a promotion where we hand out a giveaway at the gates, there’s times we have over a thousand boxes that we collect after that giveaway. And then the food compost program we use a separate color to try to keep that stream clean. And we use a yellow container, um, Slim Jim container, with a green compostable plastic bag. So, um, it gets a little complicated when we go through that many, um, different sorts, but, uh, the colors help us keep it separate and educate people how to use it. This is an example of working with Cedar Grove, who does their composting, um, this tells what we’re able to put into the food scrap, um, compost program, and what is not allowed in there. And we’ve done a lot of training with our kitchen staff, and to educate them about how to use, how to use the compost program. And, um, they’ve done very well. And we’ve got some great support from Center Plate to do that, and a lot of support from Cedar Grove. And if you’re not able to tap into a company like Cedar Grove it’s probably very challenging to implement a composting program. But fortunately in Seattle here, we’re able to um, to tap into them and make that a successful program. Um, we use Captain Plastic in all of our um, recycling artwork as a theme to tie it all together and this is an example of the recycled plastic bottle that we have in the concourse. And we do try to pair those up with trash containers to give people the option to, uh, comply, and one thing I like about this container is the round hole at the top, uh, has a rubber gasket on it and it’s difficult to put anything other than a plastic bottle in there. People avoid touching trash containers when disposing of things and that works fairly well. Um, another piece that we learned with this, um, we have a hundred of these in the building um, we don’t pull the trash liner every game. We found out that, um, we rarely fill them up, so we trained our housekeeping staff to check them at the end of the night rather than replace the bag nightly on a hundred of these. And uh, it’s helped us reduce the amount of plastic liners we go through.
Um, on the outside of the building, we work with a company called Clean Scapes that keeps the exterior of the building up. And, um, they helped us with the comingled stream in here, where we collect glass, plastic, metal and paper at the gates. The majority of the waste coming into the stadium is recyclable and we’re able to collect all that at the gates, and they do the sort for us on that, so that’s one piece that’s helped us, uh, quite a bit. And the next slide here shows you a close up again incorporating the Captain Plastic “Join the Green Team” theme, um, with the instructions. And this container the color, uh, is consistent with what’s around the city of Seattle. So we’re able to uh, conform with that. Um, another piece of signage for the back of the house that’s important and a challenge of trying to create this many streams is having a lot of space to sort all the materials. And this is a layout of our dock area that’s up on the wall in the trash room. And we have two compacters on the left for trash, for garbage, we have a cardboard and paper compacter and we have the food waste compost container. We have the plastic bottle container, the clean office stream, and on the far right we have a mixed glass, plastic and metal. And, one of our biggest challenges is just keeping those streams clean. And, uh, one of the challenges we face is contractors often throw things in the nearest open container and we’ve got construction debris that we’ve gotta deal with. Uh, most of the housekeeping staff, uh, they do a very good job of keeping it straight and are very committed to it. But it’s a constant educational process and one of the things we’ve learned is that we need to have a general construction debris waste container available. And it’s probably going to go where the glass, plastic and metal container is currently located on the right because it’s the most convenient place for people to throw things. So rather than fight ‘em we’re gonna join ‘em and uh, make that a construction dumpster and that’ll help us keep our streams cleaner. Um, on the reduce strategies, um, one of the things we’ve done in our marketing department that has helped us with this is when we order things from, uh, manufacturers that are made in China, you can actually specify that they not be separately wrapped. So, we had a backpack promotion and rather than having it come in a plastic bag in a cardboard carton, um, we asked them not to do that. So, our marketing folks that buy those kinds of items are routinely asking for ways to reduce the packaging. Um, our concessionaire has been real good about looking for ways to reduce material content in their serving items, and were able to reduce the plastic by about 30% in the plates that they were using. Um, and we’re starting to use more and more reusables, as opposed to disposables for some of the catered things. Our Diamond Dining that is now open year round is now using china and silverware, as opposed to disposables. Um, we’re trying to reduce our use of plastic water bottles, uh, within the office. Uh, we’ve emphasized using coffee mugs as opposed to using disposable cups. We’ve greatly reduced the amount of waste we’ve generated and the cost in buying the cups. And, uh, we’ve even got our engineering staff making double sided copies on the copy machine now, so that’s been very helpful in reducing the waste we generate. Um, as far as reuse goes, uh, we’re looking for more and more ways to find ways to reuse things. But, we were able to donate furniture when we upgraded our Diamond Club furniture, um, palates we obviously reuse, and we have a vendor that comes and picks them up. And as I mentioned with the plastic bottles on the concourse, we don’t replace those bags nightly, and that’s reduced, uh, the amount of bags we go through. Um, recycling, the things that we, the streams that we separate and recycle are plastic bottles, our paper and cardboard stream, the yardwaste and the food waste, our glass, plastic and metal comingled stream that comes out of the kitchens, and the, um, suites. Cooking grease is something we have recycled. Um, scrap metal is something we did pick up in this last year to make an effort to collect that rather than sending that to the landfill. So we now have a container for scrap metal that we collect throughout the year. We started a battery recycling program, um, an e-waste program and printer cartridges.
Um, one of the things we’re looking to do in the future is to really turn the waste stream on its head, and our vision would be, if it’s possible and we’re working closely with Center Plates to see if we can do this is to compost everything that’s in the seating bowl at the end of the night, um, and that would be a two pick stream. One would be for plastic and then if everything that they serve on is compostable, we’d be able to compost the rest. So we found a couple of occasions last year, we, we ran some samples through our bleacher section one night, and our club section one night and, just to give you some idea before we make the switch over on how we serve things, um, there’s quite a few plastic bottles. There’s a fair amount of trash, but the biggest amount of waste was actually compostable. So, to make the switch from the trash into the compostable realm, um, we’re working with Center Plate to do that, and if we’re able to do that, uh, I think the vast majority of our waste would be recycled as opposed to uh, now, where uh 70% of it goes to the landfill. We’re hoping to change that, maybe 60, 70% could be recycled, uh, but we need to check the costs, the materials and the quality of the materials to see if they will perform like we need them to perform in order to do that. And there’s likely some cost increase for some of the materials our concessionaire would buy, so there may be some challenges with that. But, ultimately, that’s what we’re hoping to do. Um, greening the supply side is something we’re focused on.
Uh, we currently buy 30% post-consumer fiber for our office paper. We switched to 100% post consumer business cards. Aramark who does our cleaning is implementing green cleaning products. Um, and we’re using the LEED standards for our, um, our guideline for how to go green on our cleaning side. And I’d really encourage everyone to look at LEED, and I know it’s a challenge for existing operations to get certified. But if you can go through it and attain as many of those as possible, uh, you’ll have a better operation, and the green cleaning is something that all of us can, can, uh, achieve relatively easily. Uh, and then, uh, on your restroom paper, obviously you can buy a fair amount of recycled and post consumer content in that. Um, costs to consider. There are challenges in the recycling, uh, program. Cleaning labor is something that you have to be careful of. We do a separate pick in the seating bowl at the end of the night to collect most of the plastic bottles, and that’s where most of them are, despite our efforts to promote it with our fans. Most people leave their trash in the seating bowl, so the cleaning company is key in recycling. And now they do, when they do the pick, they separate as they go, um, in one sweep, and we’re going to look at options to maybe make that into two sweeps and see if that might be more efficient. Um, and I don’t doubt that the sorting process in that post-game does cost some money, so that’s a place to be careful of. Um, compostable bags for food waste. That, uh, that’s fairly expensive. It’s uh, I want to say it’s 60 or 70 cents a bag? So, it’s quite a bit more expensive than a general plastic bag. And if you throw out food in them, um, you’ll go through the bottom with it so there’s some training there. Containers for each stream. We obviously did have to invest in separate containers and have room at the dock and separate halls for the waste streams so it pays to think through carefully how, um, that process is going to work. Um, the dumpster size and frequency of service is important. We tried to go with as large a container as we can to cut down on the number of times it needs to be picked up. And, uh, we work with a number of companies that take our waste streams and look for the best deal.
Um, on the compost side, we do have to have that picked up weekly. Obviously, with the food, so uh that frequency, uh, is pretty much mandated. Um, we’re looking at baling plastic and baling cardboard, um, as an option. We think it might be more efficient and the beauty of baling those items is then you have a metric to track your performance. Uh, you’ll know each night how much cardboard you collected and you’ll know how much plastic you collected. Currently, there’s a lag in getting that information, so it’s tough to get the feedback to see how you’re doing. But baling would give us that feedback, so we’re, we’re currently reviewing our whole waste stream and some of our equipment is getting old so we’ve got a capital budget of $150,000 this year to revise our trash area and to replace some equipment. And we’re hoping to get more efficient and get some better feedback on how we’re doing. Um, material handling is really important. As we upgrade our equipment, we’re going to standardize on some of the containers we use to move trash around the building and they’ll all have forked pockets so they can be dumped into the containers more easily. And then if you do some kind of a waste audit, it’s a good idea to figure out what your waste streams are like. And, um, we did it ourselves, with the photo I showed you earlier, so it doesn’t have to cost money. Um, but you can hire someone too, and through the lead process they encourage you, and it may be required, to do a waste audit. So, they actually go through your dumpster after a period of time and see what’s in there, see how your recycling is going. So that’s a place where you might want to spend some money, but you can also get some information on your own if you’re willing to make the effort. Um, how to pay for these costs. Um, landfill avoidance savings. Costs here to send trash to the landfill is getting very expensive, and increasing a lot faster than the cost of living. We currently pay about $116 per ton to go to the landfill, and it’s, um, a regulated rate in the city of Seattle. We can’t shop it around, and the rates are expected to go up significantly over the next couple years. So for every ton of, ton of waste, we recycle, we can avoid the landfill cost. And then obviously, there, well in the past there have been some relatively significant rebates from the recycled material. Those markets may not be doing well now. Hopefully, they’ll come back where they were, but there’s still some savings, some money, some revenue streams you can generate.
And then, uh, I’d like to suggest that with implementing other sustainable business practices in energy conservation, um, there’s some significant savings there, that would help justify paying some of the added expenses, if that’s the case for recycling. So let me go through um, what we, how we calculated our savings from 2008. We sent 395 tons of waste to, to recyclers, and overall avoided $116 per ton landfill charge, which is a savings of $45,000. The paper and cardboard, uh, rebate was a little over $11,000 and then we got a little bit of money through our plastic stream, so when you add up, we saved about $58,000, um, so that’s a significant amount of money. Um, again as I cautioned with cost, there’s containers, there’s extra labor and what not, that you have to factor into this as well. And I don’t doubt that it’s somewhat of a wash to do all this, so there are some expenses that would chip away at this or eat this all together. Um, on the energy saving side, uh, we’ve been encouraging our staff to do what they do at home, when you’re paying the bill. Shut the door, close the windows, turn the lights off, um, set your thermostat back, and when people take ownership in a building as large as a stadium like they do at home, you can generate some significant savings. And with 2006 as our base year, in ’07 we saved over $200,000 and in ’08, we saved $284,000. So over a two year period, we were able to save over half a million dollars in energy costs. Again, just doing the common sense things, taking ownership in the building, uh, using automation as much as you can. And I would suggest that if some of these recycling efforts end up costing you some money, um, that’s a good place to generate some significant savings to help justify that. Um, we also have a green team that we formed, and we meet on occasion and talk about it regularly, on how we’re doing in our meetings. Uh, but what we’re encouraging our staff and our employees to do to become more green is find ways to recycle more. We’re at a diversion rate of about 30% with the program as it is now. I’m challenging our staff to find ways to get to 40%. There are some, I think the Giants, the San Francisco Giants are operating at about a 40% diversion rate. And there’s other teams like the Pirates, and the Padres and the Eagles, and the A’s that are doing very well, so I’d encourage everyone to talk to folks, and see what they’re doing and learn from them.
Uh, we’re always interested in knowing what other folks are doing and how we can do better. Um, we’re encouraging staff to conserve energy, at work and at home. And again, it’s the common sense things, turn off the lights, turn off equipment. This November, we set an all time low for gas use in Safeco Field since the building’s been open, over about ten years. And it’s as if we reduced our use by 60% over what we used just three years ago, and that was largely, uh, our efforts to decommission the building at the end of the season, uh, when baseball was done. Um, and we were able to save a tremendous amount of money by doing that. Um, set back temperatures, keep doors closed is a challenge with all the people coming and going. And then reduce our consumption. Reduce the bottled water use, reduce the use of disposable coffee cups, reduce the use of single-sided copies, and reducing our use of plastic bags. So, uh, that’s making an impact. Reducing our waste stream as well as saving costs on buying things. And then another big piece of our environmental impact is transportation related, pollution and carbon emissions. And we encourage our employees and our fans to carpool, take public transportation and to bicycle. And that’s about everything that I had to present. I hope, I hope that some of that stuff was of interest and of use and I look forward to getting some questions.
Questions for Scott
Judy Taylor: Ok, thank you Scott, this is Judy Taylor. I’m sorry, I finally got on. We had a few technical difficulties here. Uhhh, and what I heard was very interesting and we do have a lot of questions for you. Um, so let’s just dig in to the questions, and I do if some of these have been answered because I didn’t get to hear most of the presentation, I’m afraid. Um, but, very general question for you is about the size of your stadium and how much total waste do you generate per average game?Scott: Um, we, our capacity here is about 47,000 seats, um and our average attendance more or less over years is somewhere around 30,000. So, we got the 81 home games. Um, what we generate per game, I don’t have it broken down that way, but over the last three years we’ve done about 1,300 tons of trash each year, over the last three years. So, um, we do have things that we do throughout the year beyond baseball but the majority of that comes from baseball. Um, so if you want to do some math on that you can probably get some rough figures as to what we generate per game.
Judy: Ok, um and then the next question is: Can you please describe your method for measuring the percentages of waste and recyclables? Did you get this information from the waste hauler or gather in another way?
Scott: Um, yeah, it’s a good question. It’s something I’m interested in and as we review our dumpster area, I’d love to find a way to weigh stuff myself, but right now we don’t have that ability so we rely on the vendors that we send the material to. So we use Waste Management for our, uh, landfill items and then the recycling streams go to a variety of companies that collect it and recycle it for us. So we do rely on them for that information.
Judy: Ok, um and then there’s another question about the water usage: Has there been an increase in water usage due to dining utensil reuse? Scott: Um, you know we’ve just started to scratch that a little bit and on game day it’s probably not going to have a big impact, um, it’s mostly our non-game day and our catered events. So, I do expect that will have an increase in our water use and subsequent natural gas use to heat the hot water, um, but we have installed aerators in our faucets to try to reduce our water use and natural gas use. Uh, but yes, there will be some impact there.
Judy: Ok, um do you have, um, any type of recycling outside of the stadium, such as tailgating areas?
Scott: Um, we don’t have a lot of parking here, um, so and we don’t manage that piece of it. Seattle is such that they don’t do a lot of tailgating. In Philadelphia with the Eagles and in Milwaukee with the Brewers, um, tailgating is huge and that is a big component of game day and it’s important to try to, um, create opportunities to sort that stuff and collect and recycle. But here we don’t do a bunch of that because of our site and because of the nature of our fans who don’t do a lot of tailgating.
Judy: Scott, what about contamination? A lot of public venues have problems with bins getting contaminated. Do you have that problem, and if so, does your staff sort out the contamination?
Scott: Uh, we do have that problem, um it’s a battle when you’re trying to separate that many streams of waste and when we can we sort it out, and there’s times you just make a judgment and say “you know what, it’s not worth it this time.” But let’s go back and find out what the root cause of the contamination was and let’s try to promote our program more, let’s try to educate people more and it’s a challenge. Particularly with some of our concession employees who might be coming here for the first time as part of a service group, as a volunteer group, and that’s where we find our biggest challenge. So, when we walk around the ballpark as the gates open, um, we’ll often stop by a concession stand or a beer portal or whatever and just say “Hey, how you doing, do you know what we’re doing with recycling,” make sure they have the right containers. And a little bit of that encouragement goes a long way to keeping the streams clean.
Judy: what about your recycling staff? How many people do you have on that?
Scott: Um, we don’t have anybody specifically dedicated to that, although, having said that, the cleaning folks obviously move trash and get it into the trash room, so you could allocate people to that. Um, but um, we try to make it a part of everyone’s job, again instilling it as part of our culture. So, our event staff, all of our cleaning staff, um all of the concession staff are expected to be a part of that recycling team. Uh, but the people who are dedicated to it are the people from the cleaning company that collect the trash and then process it in the trash room. And, um, I don’t know the exact number there. If someone wanted to email me I could give them some more information, I’d be happy to talk to them on the phone.
Judy: Ok, and here’s a question about your bowl pick. Why would it be more efficient to do two passes of the bowl when picking trash and recyclables?
Scott: It may not be. Um, and we want to study that and try, I think one of the things about recycling is um, the way we do it here may work for us and someone else may have a better way to do it or a different way to do it. I think it’s important to try different ways and to quantify the labor and quantify the results. I do know having picked the seating bowl a couple times myself, it’s very difficult to pull a bag through the seating bowl and, and put items into it. When we did the sort in the club and the bleacher area where I showed you a picture of the three streams, we did one stream at a time and even at that rate it’s difficult moving the bag with you through there and picking up the right items. Um, so I do intend this year to do a post game pick and try doing it through one sweep. But um, it’s a challenge, and I wonder if we can increase the amount of plastic we pick if we do a separate pick, but again you have to be careful of the labor. And I think trial and error is the best way to find out what works.
Judy: And have you had any complications with, um, hauling your food waste?
Scott: We haven’t, um, Cedar Grove’s been a great partner of ours. In fact they sponsored our Earth Day promotion last year, where we tried to offset all of our carbon emissions from the game. Um, they’ve been great to work with. They’ve done a lot of educational things for us, with the concessions staff and with the housekeeping staff, and, um, no we haven’t had any trouble with that at all. We haven’t had any real odor issues that are any different than we have with the general trash. Uh, and they’ve been there to pick up the items when we need them picked up. We had good service. So, it is key to have that kind of partner in your marketplace, and if you don’t, composting may not be feasible, or it’s going to take a lot more effort on your part. Thankfully, here Cedar Grove has been a great partner of ours.
Judy: There’s a question, Scott, about rebates, and someone is wondering uh, where your rebates come from. I think by rebate you simply mean the, uh, the amount you get from your trestle processor.
Scott: Exactly, yeah, I’ve been calling it a rebate. So with the paper and cardboard we send that to the recycler and they send us, you know, so much money per ton. And I’m considering that a rebate. Uh, a payment back for the recycled materials and we’ve been able to do pretty well with our paper and cardboard, and do a little bit of, get a little bit of cash flow from the plastic, so far.
Judy: Ok, and, um, somebody here is asking if it’s possible to view a copy of your recycling training video.
Scott: Sure.
Judy: Do you have that online, or how can we view that?
Scott: Again, if some folks want to email me, um, or call me, I can probably mail it to you. Um, I had intended or wanted to do this on the Webinar, but it’s not possible to do the videos, so I’d be happy to share that with folks.
Judy: And uh, I’m not sure, have you put your email address out so everyone can see it?
Scott: Um, I haven’t, but I’ll, uh, I’ll give it to you now. It’s sjenkins@mariners.com.
Judy: And another question is what happens during special events at Safeco Field? Do you, um, experience different types of, methods of collecting the recyclables?
Scott: Um, you know, that’s been a challenge on a couple of occasions where we all the sudden get dumb about recycling. Where we go into another event mode, and it’s not game day mode, and all the sudden we don’t have the right containers in the right places. Or maybe the containers we use on game day aren’t exactly appropriate for a wedding, for instance. Um, so we’ve had to get our non-game day, uh, event staff tuned into that, and our housekeeping staff. And again, it’s just part of our culture, and it’s something we do. If we generate glass bottles, beer bottles, I don’t really care what kind of event it is, we’re going to recycle them. So, we have had some challenges, trying to get the right containers in the right place, and keep that mindset on recycling, um, fresh. But we do, we don’t vary from our approach, but uh, based on the event we may have to make some slight adjustments and remind our staff that it’s still important to recycle regardless of the event.
Judy: Um, and here’s another question about your, your recycling pick ups. This one says how much do your recycling pick ups cost, and does the rebate make up for it?
Scott: Uh, that is a very good question. Um, in some cases we don’t pay for the pick up, in other cases we do. Um, so that’s again part of the economic equation and it’s going to vary by who your hauler is. And we’ve switched haulers a couple of times, and we’re going to continue to look for the best, most cost effective way to do it. But in general, we try to have the biggest container we can to reduce the amount of trips, and to reduce that ultimate cost.
Judy: Ok, and then one last question for you, Scott, do you have single stream recycling capabilities in Seattle or do you choose to keep your recycling separate?
Scott: Uh, I think single stream’s a great way to go, um, but we don’t have that ability here. So for us to increase the amount of, our diversion rate, we really need to separate the streams ourself, which makes it a lot more complicated. Um, on the exterior of the building the company, Clean Scapes, that takes care of our sidewalks and does the trash on the city streets, they have a single stream system right now. And we’re watching that closely to see how that goes, because that could help us make our recycling program more successful. Uh, but in doing it, when we comingle the streams, we don’t get any rebate back on the material, so we’ve been somewhat reluctant to comingle things, um, for economic reasons. But, uh, I think if there’s, if it’s available in the community it’s probably a good way to really dramatically increase your, your um diversion rate.
Al's Bio
Judy: Ok, thank you so much, Scott. We have a lot of questions, and there’s still more coming in, but let’s move on to Al. And Al, I hope I don’t butcher your last name, I always have problems with this. Al Matyasovsky is the supervisor at Central Support Services at Penn State, in University Park, Pennsylvania. Al began working for Penn State in the Operations Department in the Office of Physical Plants in 1984, and he’s held a variety of positions there. Presently, as Supervisor of Central Support Services, he’s responsible for labor equipment and solid waste services at Penn State University Park campus. During Al’s tenure, Special Events Recycling Programs at Penn State have been recognized at the state level and nationally for excellence in creativity. Penn State currently has six special event recycling programs, which diverted over 2800 tons of material from the landfill, and have generated over $500,000 that’s benefitted philanthropy and scholarships. Al’s been recognized by Penn State for exemplary leadership, and is a recipient of the Staff Excellence Award, the Green Destiny Council Award, and the award for Community Service. Al proudly serves on the board of the Center County United Way. And Al will now discuss Penn State’s Beaver Stadium’s Recycling Program. Al?Al's Presentation
Al: Thank you, Judy. Uh, allow me first to thank everyone for this opportunity. Uh, and I hope that I don’t disappoint. And, uh, Scott, well done. What a wonderful program you have out there in Seattle. Um, just so folks kind of know where I am in the Penn State scheme of things, I work with the Scott Jenkins of Penn State. So I don’t have stadium/facility responsibility, I provide service to those folks. I hope that puts, uh, my role here at Penn State in the proper perspective. On the screen you see a picture of Beaver Stadium. That’s a 107,000 seat facility, um, and uh, we provide waste management services, recycling and refuse, municipal solid waste services for that venue.We’re going to focus on Penn State, but I should tell you that we have a, uh, semi-pro baseball stadium, the Spikes they call it, that we have a recycling presence and waste management presence there. And also our basketball arena, the Bryce Jordan Center, a basketball and entertainment arena. There is a program in that facility as well that, uh, benefits philanthropy. So, as you, we’re looking out the window actually from our vantage point at Beaver Stadium Bryce Jordan and just on the other side of the stadium is the Spikes. Uh, and I want start there because that really is, uh, what we found was the way to change the face of recycling and waste management at Penn State. We, we gave the folks another reason to pitch in. And, and by that I mean it just wasn’t Waste Management at the tailgate areas, it wasn’t for them to find something, the appropriate thing to do with that bottle or that can as they were here visiting our university. But they knew that when they put the can or bottle in a container they were actually making a donation to the United Way, and it was going to help the 37 agencies, uh, in our county. And we think that, and we’ve expanded on that, and uh, that has helped us make our point that waste management isn’t just about keeping it out of the landfill, but also has value and benefits that go well beyond the trash can.
Uh, I’d like to start with, um, some objectives. I hope this is why I am here, and I hope if I, if I make these objectives, uh, I think that I’ve done my job. Um, that you will go away having an appreciation for Penn State’s commitment to recycling and reuse initiatives. That you identify opportunities for special event recycling in your facilities, uh, on your campuses or wherever you are out there. Uh, share and carry the messages to your campus facility leaders and beyond. Talk about recycling and waste management in a positive way, and install these things to see if they can benefit your university or your facility in your community. And that you understand special event challenges as it relates to large venues. We think that we have, and we know that we have, uh, this year, because Michigan is being remodeled, we do have the largest, uh, campus stadium at 107,000 this year only. That’ll change as soon as Michigan comes on.
So let’s talk about it. Uh, (pause) I’m not pressing a mouse. That little pause is I’m pointing at Paul Ruskin, my um, compatriot here, so, uh, maybe I’ll start hitting it, that might work. (laughter) Here are the challenges - at Penn State University, we’ve got a 110 acres of paved and unpaved parking. For a typical football game, we typically get 120,000 to 200,000 fans per game. And that depends upon a couple of things. If it’s a close game. Uh, if it’s Ohio State versus, uh, a farther away game like Wisconsin, we will get more visitors from Ohio State, or Temple, or, uh, we don’t play Pitt anymore, but it would be a very well, uh, attended game. Also, what’s at stake, if we’re the national hunt it’s, uh, for number one playing number two, there’ll be more people here than it would be if there was nothing at stake. I will tell you that the largest single stream, one, uh, event stream that we’ve ever on our campus historically was Ohio State about three years ago. At that one football game, which was an 8:00 kick off, we had 124 tons of refuse that we had to deal with. That’s a pretty big, uh, stream, and quite frankly that’s what, uh, caused us to review how we were going about our clean up. It took us five days to clean up after that game, with a crew of 70 people. We reduced exactly the same scenario with our new installation of our waste management program – blue bag and clear bag – to, uh, one day and a part of a day, with the same number of people. So, uh, we really reduced the cost of clean up significantly.
Uh, communicating desired outcomes is a challenge. You have, uh, certainly, new folks visiting every day, or every game here at Penn State, so, how do you get the word out on expectations, and what they’re supposed to do with the blue bags and so on? And, uh, the collection. Process and development. We don’t do anything in a vacuum here, we partner with some, uh, great folks that I will mention, uh, in the presentation. So developing the process that is going to be economically sound, that is going to be efficient, uh, and all of that, are some of the challenges that we face when you’ve got 110 acres and, uh, a lot of folks visiting our university. (pause) There we go, ok. We had trouble with the slides, here. The stake holders at Penn State, and again, we’re a university and a service provider, so if you’ll look at our stakeholders I would like you to look at them within that context. We are a service provider, the Office of Physical Plants. Someone calls us and says we need waste service, and we do have a, uh, a very extensive waste management, uh, service here at the university. A lot of special events. It’s free to anybody that works at Penn State, so you want to have a tailgate, you want to have recycling there, all you got to do is make a phone call or email and have it. There’s no cost to you, we appreciate, uh, your wanting to be part of that response. Uh, athletics is the venue owner. By that, uh, I mean they own the venue, and if we have an idea that we want to paint all the dumpsters bright red and do something wild like that, we have to run it through athletics to make sure that they approve of that. And so, and, it’s, it’s a good relationship but there are a lot of ideas, and some of the ideas they, they just simply say “we don’t want to do that”. We understand and we move on.
Uh, we have students involved in all of our activities here at Penn State as much as we are able. And the student group, the Staters, Students Taking Action To Encourage Recycling, are the face of the, of the uh, venue at football games. They have shirts that say “Please Recycle”, uh, they visit the tailgates, they hand out blue bags and ask the people to please participate in our program. Um, and uh, we found that when the students are not part of the effort that our capture falls off dramatically, about 30% less, than, uh, games when they are involved.
Joe Krentzman and Son has been our hauler and marketer. They are a local scrap metal company and uh, Steve Krentzman, the owner and president was there in the very beginning when we started doing recycling way back when in 1995. Uh, with our other partners that we’ll mention. And they have been with ever since. In all of our special events, and I can’t say enough about, uh, this great group of folks. They work with us, they, uh, send their experts to be part of committees, and they walk around after a football game on Sunday and evaluate the kids. They have done all of this, uh, for the greater good. We are most, uh, appreciative of the Krentzman family.
Uh, the Center County Solid Waste Authority, uh, have been facilitators, consultants, friends, uh, Joanne Shaffer, and I know Joanne, I hope you’re out there listening, is our county coordinator and an absolutely wonderful, gifted lady, that when we have ideas, uh, about, uh, recycling or managing waste we involve Joanne and it’s always been a very positive relationship and that started way back when and continues to this day. Just asked Joanne a question the other day about a commodity on campus and what stream she would prefer it to be in.
And finally, our stakeholders at the Center County Solid Waste Authority. These are the folks that have benefitted and were the first, uh, people to benefit from the philanthropy at our football games. When, when we recycle, and we tell people “when you put that can in that bin, you’re making a donation to the United Way” we mean it. And we are now beyond $60,000 being donated to the Center County United Way. Again, changing the face of why you’re going to put that can, uh, in the bin. Paul?
Our approach has been, uh, to pilot and design, uh, operation and uh, I had a little screenshot- there we go. Our approach has been to pilot and design the operations blueprint for how we’re going to go forward, and again we didn’t do this in a vacuum. Uh, we walked about the grounds, we identified main pedestrian ways, we looked for easy access for trucks, where would be the best place to put our dumpsters. And where we couldn’t put a dumpster, what kind of equipment would get the same kind of message and, uh, materials out there, so our, our approach was that. And that’s all committed to a Cad Map, and, uh, and in the end of the year we revise and then we start there the next season. And we have been massaging this map since our first, uh, special event, uh, stadium game back in 1995. So, it’s kind of the granddaddy here. We also assess and evaluate, and, uh, we’re always looking at data, looking at our processes and I can tell you that, uh, this has come from several houses. Center County Solid Waste Authority, folks have had input into the process, and said “boy, if you did this it’d make it easier”, “If you did that, it would not”, and we’ve always, uh, tried to implement their advice.
My fellows, and I have, uh, all of this set up around Beaver Stadium we’re going to look at that is done by a crew of six men, and then it’s managed throughout the football season by one fellow. There are over, uh, 68 stations, well over 300 blue carts, and then we have the blue bag process that we’re going to talk about that is managed by a crew of 16, and that is my labor force. We, we can comingle in those bags. The, uh, carts that are out there, the 300 plus carts that are actually source separated. It is required by the Center County Solid Waste Authority where we send all of our stuff that we source separate all of the material and our, uh, contamination must be below 3%. So we’ve got to be conscientious in that. Everything that we get off of our venue is weighed. We have weigh slips and when I tell you last football season, in seven games, we recycled 111 tons, I have weigh slips to back up that tonnage. Um, the assets. The things that have made the going easier, uh, and has helped us along the way has been, uh, a very responsive university community. We have people that come to the games that talk about recycling, uh, as though they were in church. They absolutely love the program, the fact that they’re throwing trash in a bin but it’s going to help our neighbors in need down the road and around the bend, they think that that’s a pretty, pretty cool thing. And everybody involved, uh, should and does take, uh, pride in that and talks about it so, uh, it wasn’t a hard sell. And we’ve gotten great participation. Uh, the Town and Gown partnerships, I’ve already mentioned the Krentzmen folks, and the Center County United Way. I must include the, uh, the Center County Solid Waste Authority, uh, and their folks. There is pride there, ladies and gentlemen, and every time we suggest that we make it a little longer, uh, a little tougher, uh, we don’t get people complaining. We get a can-do attitude and spirit that really, uh, heartens you and makes you want to jump to the challenge.
Our student leadership and involvement has been the key. Uh, there are, uh, representatives, they’re out there. They walk every venue, that 110 acres, every football game, uh, four hours before the game starts and uh, beautiful fresh-faced Penn State students with the right message about “Would you recycle your tailgate?” “Leave your blue bag here” and “Support the Center County United Way” It’s just a wonderful thing to see, and in fact, I know that Barbara Angeletti is out there. Uh, University of West Virginia is going to come this fall and, uh, be part of the blue bag program. And we hope to uh, show Barbara and her colleagues what we do up here. We’ve been sharing all along, and Barbara wants, you want to see a wonderful program and meet a great lady, you just call Barbara Angeletti and go down to West Virginia and go down and spend some time with their folks. Uh, the Center County Solid Waste Authority, we mentioned Joanne and, uh, her people, uh, the facilitation and partnership that we have enjoyed continues to this day and it goes way back when I became involved in waste management. And, uh, their advice, their support, their uh ease of working with us, and also we don’t do everything right, but, uh, they know how to tell us to make an adjustment or “Gee, that’s just not, uh, the way we want to receive it”, and we try to make the appropriate adjustments, uh, here at the campus so we send a good product to the county for Joanne to market. I have a motivated workforce, ladies and gentlemen, I got six guys and, uh, they love what they do. They are proud of their work. They have a reputation on campus for excellence and a great attitude so it’s not hard to send those guys forth to do a wonderful job here, uh, at the university. And I consider them to be a great asset to what we are trying to do here.
And, uh, we do experience inspirational leadership here at Penn State. Our president talks about our recycling program, and he has it on video and he has it in his Christmas message. And from President Spanier on down everybody thinks that our program is pretty good, that we’re doing the right thing, we’re helping our neighbors, we’re keeping stuff out of the landfill and everybody gets to share in the good, good programs here at Penn State. A little bit of the history, and I invited Joanne Shaffer to come and talk about this because Joanne was part of the history at Penn State and continues to this day. Back in 1989, uh, when recycling was mandated in the state of Pennsylvania and we started our program at Penn State, we did have an offering at Beaver Stadium but it was two ten yard roll offs on the east side of the stadium and that was it. There were no containers, there was no signage, there was no encouragement. It was a pretty poor program. Um, but from that early beginnings, we realized that there were some people who wanted it and it was appropriate that we begin to expand it at our venue. And so, rather than having two boxes that very barely covered a 40-yard footprint, uh, we expanded it to the 110 acres, and this is the way that we did it. Our current program, uh, began in 1995 because we had Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts that started with us, and uh, the Scouts did it for ten years. They were wonderful in their participation. They walked about in the venue and asked the people to participate. We did not have blue bags at that time, we just had blue carts. We have since, um, increased the number of blue carts by over 100%. And the Scouts were and integral part of that success story and the money all, again, went to the Center County United Way for distribution.
Um, in 2005, with changes in leadership and a lot of the Scouts that participated, they asked, they wanted to take a break, which we absolutely understood. And from that, we involved Penn State students. The Staters got involved. We always had philanthropy as part of the message at Penn State, when we started it in ’95. It always benefitted the United Way. It’s something that at Penn State is the preferred charity so that wasn’t a hard thing to figure out. Uh, our tonnage was lower, obviously, than it is today. Uh, the stadium was smaller, there was no presence of recycling so the tonnage in ’95 was around 4 tons a game, and we fluctuated depending upon all those other things I told you. Whether it was a close game, close proximity college, or whether or not there was something at stake. But philanthropy being a constant and the Staters coming on board in 2005, we began to go to the tailgates rather than expecting someone to carry their recycling over to the blue carts. We left the blue carts in place, but we began to install blue bags, uh, we’re going to talk about that in a little more detail. So game day Saturday we were out there among them. We were talking to our tailgaters, we were giving them this positive message, environmental message of, uh, participating in recycling, to keep it out of the landfill, and that we would do something responsible and send that stuff to market and then share the money, or send the money to the Center County United Way. Uh, the post-game clean up on Sunday is something to see, and it really is about, uh, the color of the bags. Our tailgaters do a phenomenal job. We make available at every football game 20,000 blue bags and 20,000 clear trash bags, uh and we dispense them, I’m going to show you in one of the slides. We dispense them by our students handing them out and if you didn’t see one of the students you can go to one of the green top dumpsters and get a bag. So, when you arrive on Sunday and your job is to pick up recycling, all you’ve got to do is show up in one of our parking lots, being directed by a supervisor, and you pick all of the blue bags. The trash goes the other direction. Because they’re clear, it’s pretty easy, very visually easy for training as well as for people to make the decision. Uh, here’s a, uh, typical set up at Penn State University. We have green-topped dumpsters that say “Free”, and there are blue recycling bags and clear trash bags.
The reason we use clear trash bags, are a couple of reasons. One, our equipment, as it backs up the refuse bags, uh, we want to make sure that there’s nothing in there that can harm the equipment. Uh, also, we’re looking sharps, anything that could harm the employee. And thirdly, if there’s something, if there’s a target rich bag, if there’s recycling, more recycling than refuse, we’ll take that clear bag and put it in our blue bag. And this is all a training, uh, process in place for the football games. The blue carts that you see there are the passive capture that people can walk over from their tailgate if they wish to source separate, or as they’re walking by there’s many. You’re actually looking at the north side of the stadium. We call that stadium proper. There’s, uh, a great concentration of people walking about, there are radio programs going on, and different types of venues. A fair-like atmosphere, if you will. So as they’re enjoying their beverage, they have a blue cart they can put it in. When they’re at their tailgate and they’re eating and drinking, in larger quantities and maybe going into the game or it’s after the game, they use the bags to, uh, put the recycling and trash in instead of at the tailgate bags. We ran out of dumpsters. Because so many people were wanting to have the blue bags that when my guys came up with these small A frames. Uh, they’re cheap, absolutely, and still the same message. They’re free, they’re green topped. There are blue bags for dispensing, and you would find these along main pedestrian pathways around the stadium.
You come to a Penn State football game late you may be as far as a 20 or a 30 minute walk. They’ll park you a great distance away. And so these are along the way that people could go and get them, and the people know where they are now. So, we’ve been able to watch the folks now from, uh, from vantage points in the stadium, and other locations. And they’ll go over and peel off maybe 5, 6 or 7 blue bags and if you ask them what they’re doing they say “Oh I’m good for the season” or something like that. And since it says free, we’re fine with that. We don’t, uh, criticize somebody taking more bags, we just, take the bags and please support our program is our message. Um, inside of the stadium, and we do recycle inside of the stadium, though I would tell you the largest commodity that we collect in the stadium is cardboard. Uh, and for all the materials that we collect, the stadium is less than a third, but we do have a significant capture of cardboard and we do collect plastic bottles. Again, since I’m not the venue owner, we are really, um, providing a service on whatever they feel they want to dispense inside the game, plastic bottles being one of them. We place these at the vomitories. There’s a 110 of these blue carts as you’re exiting the stands and, uh, if you know the battle cry “We Are Penn State”, we thought it would be cool if we said “We Are Green” and encourage the people to, uh, put the bottles, uh, in there. Uh, we also have recycling bins on our concourse on our midlevel that have ad panels that we are selling or renting those ad panels, and we’re using that money to support our recycling initiatives in the stadium. Uh, the clean up costs, in that 110 acres has been reduced by 40%, and that money is used to clean and glean from those blue bags, which is, as you would imagine, very labor intensive. So, it isn’t like “Oh my God, this is a very expensive, uh, effort”. We really found some money that’s kind of evening out the effort, uh. If we could market the material and donate it back to the stadium it would be significantly more funds found in that operation.
Now, I went through that rather quickly. Uh, and each one of those photos was a picture of our stadium. Uh, all you got to do is add 200,000 people and you can see the challenge. I do have numbers that I will share with you and if you do have questions, I’d be happy to, uh, to respond.
Questions for Al
Judy: Ok, thank you very much, Al.Al: Sure
Judy: We’ve been getting some, uh, questions coming in. Um, one I actually had a few questions about this. Um, you do have a campus-wide recycling program and how is it similar to the stadium program? And are the two operations, are there any inconsistencies?
Al: There are no inconsistencies, uh, and we do have an active program. We are at 50.7% of a 12,000 ton stream. Uh, we have all of the traditional and we have several non-traditional materials that we collect. The traditional are obviously the cans, bottles, glass, news mix, cardboard, uh, but the non-traditionals that we recycle at Penn State that are included in our capture are food waste, pre and post-consumer food waste. Um, but it doesn’t look different. We use the same signage, the same language, the same labels. It’s the same people. My guys do the special events as well as the on-campus collection. On campus, we involve janitorial workers to bring it out of the buildings, so, and they are very important to our process. But the information that we share is really, uh, supported by the same types of language and selection and goes to the same place. Nothing is really different, it’s just, in fact that’s what helped us to uh, to field our processes. We knew where it was going to go. Joanne and her folks, we knew what we wanted to say. And in the way of capture, what we were allowed to capture.
Judy: Ok, um, somebody wants to know about your composting operations. What can you tell us about that?
Al: Uh, well, we do, uh, food waste. Pre-consumer food waste, which is back of the house stuff. It’s about an 850 ton stream. We do post-consumer in our two hotels. There are two hotels at either end of campus, the Nittany Lion Inn and the Penn Stater. We collect, because of the process of the collection is plate scrapings, we also collect out of four, uh, head houses where research, uh, takes place so we’re getting, uh, the plants that they’ve been studying. Could be tomato plants, cocoa plants, and that goes into our process. We grind up, uh, trees and brush from campus, in separate streams. We also have a separate stream for form lumber, like palates and other materials. We do make our own mulch, out of the wood material. The palates are used as pile structure and also as a minimal carbon source, they don’t break down a lot but they do, they stay in the process. Uh, we generate about 15 tons of compost material. That is screened, and because we’re under the process by rule, we can only use it on Penn State property, but all 15 tons goes to projects here at University Park. And, uh, we run out of compost before we’ve met all of our orders, and, uh, that’s the way it works. My guys, uh, the waste management guys, are the pick up and transport. We use a candy cane lift with ninety gallon carts at all of our dining halls and at the head houses. And, uh, there’s a regular route, takes us about 2 hours in the morning to pick up that material from 5 to 7 am. We off load it, and as it is off loaded, the technician at the compost site immediately involves it with manures and quadders in a grinder and begins to build the row. We do not let the stuff sit overnight, or for any length of time. We have to coordinate the offloading of the food waste with, uh, with the worker being able to, uh, grind it and get it into windrow. Um, we have about a 50 acre site. About 2 or 3 acres is production, the rest of it is staging area. Our production had, and the ratio is 1 to 2, you have to have twice the area for, uh, vegetative filtration and sheep flow and all of that, and we probably have about a 25 acre piece, so we’re well over that. Uh, and that’s it. That’s, uh, that’s the 10,000 foot version of it. Uh, I should say to everybody out there, we’d love to show and tell. So if you’re anywhere near Penn State and you’d like to have a tour of what we’re doing, spend a couple of days with us, we would very much enjoy that so, uh, take us up on it. Come on out here to Pennsylvania.
Judy: That sounds great, Al. And, uh, within the stadium, which of the food, I believe you are starting some composting within the stadium, is that correct?Al: We have had a discussion with the concession folks, and because it’s their venue it is just discussion at this point. We are considering composting at our tailgates, by putting biodegradable bags on those dumpsters and those A-frames. And, uh, it would be appropriate language, and if you have a hot dog or a couple of, uh, some food leftover at your tailgate, you’re going to put it in that bio bag and drop it with your blue recycling bag and we think that will pretty simple. We don’t know if people will warm to it or not. Inside of the stadium, because we control back of the house stuff, we are, we have a dialogue now, again no one’s said we want to do it. But, uh, we will take that food waste if they are in agreement, uh, for their folks to spend the labor to collect it. We do collect food waste, not in Beaver Stadium, but we do collect it at the Bryce Jordan Center and we’ve had a food, a post-consumer and a pre-consumer food waste, uh, compost program in Bryce Jordan Center. So after a basketball game, that food that used to go in the compacter goes in a container and ends up in the back of the house and we, uh, send that on to our compost site. So, we’re, uh, we have it in one place and it’s working, just haven’t been able to get it in Beaver Stadium yet. Or in the Spikes. And everything is on it’s own time and it’s own schedule and uh, I could ask the folks for so many things, and because I like to think we have this great report they try to accommodate me but I don’t think that I would serve them well if I did that. Uh, we’re really looking for that low hanging fruit where we could put a minimal amount of effort into the greatest capture, and we’re doing that right along. So, uh, food waste. It’s almost there, but not quite.
Judy: Thanks Al. Um, we have, uh, two questions from one person that are related. Do you assess the cost, the cost avoidance, or does the venue owner do that? And, you mentioned you’ve cut the cleaning costs by 40%. Is that mainly through the two bag system?
Al: It is, uh, the second question first. Through the two bag system, because, uh, there’s no litter. That 124 tons at Ohio State, we did not have the blue bag program, and that 124 tons was spread throughout that 110 acres. And it was a mess, and it was really handpicking and very labor intensive, so the bags have created and opportunity for us to clean up, uh, with a minimal amount of litter being at our venue. Um, as far as the, uh, the avoided costs. The venue owner, football, pays for everything. And, uh, and nothing here is a secret, so when they give me a budget number and my guys apply their time to it, they’re seeing the costs related to it. It’s a significant expense to clean up after a football game and 40% of that cost, because of the blue bag program, has been reduced. However, we’re taking some of that money and using it to pay for some of the labor that’s needed to open those blue bags up and glean that for market with Joanne and her friends.
Judy: And, here’s a related question. How do you deal with the barrels overflowing with thousands and thousands of fans entering the stadium at the same time?
Al: We have, uh, crews of landscape folks that are at the, there are four main gates at Beaver Stadium, very large gates that thousands of people will queue up. And we have recycling and other types of containers at those venues, those venue positions. And landscape will begin, as soon as they begin to overflow, landscape will be there to bag and rebag. As well as, there’s a crew of, uh, football labor folks that work the games, that you know, tarp up the field and all of that business. So, uh, we have those folks assigned, uh, and they do a really, uh, they do a good job and if it’s comingled, that’s fine. It just goes into the blue bag, and then we clean that later on, on Sunday and the following week.
Judy: And Al, you, uh, mentioned that you charge for the panels on the recycling cans. How much do you charge? Is it per season?
Al: It is per season, but football manages all that and they haven’t told me yet, so I don’t know. Uh, when we put the panels in place, we said “Look, if you don’t want to deal with the panels, we will, and we’ll control the dollars. Or, you can, and you control the dollars” Certainly, that we wouldn’t have an inappropriate ad inside of a venue like Beaver Stadium. Uh, and they said they wanted to control, and that they would share the dollars. But I don’t know if it’s a million bucks or ten bucks. But I do know that those panels are already sold, or rented, for three years out to the same company. Uh, and they are all on the concourse level. The mid level. In Beaver Stadium, you can walk all the way around the stadium at one point in the midlevel called the concourse. There are restrooms there, concessions, you name it. There are eating areas, picnic tables, that kind of stuff and these are placed strategically along there. They are stainless steel, they’re not painted. They are for the collection of plastic, and the ad panel is about 4 foot by 3 foot on each one of those stainless steel panels.
Questions for Scott and Al
Judy: Ok, thank you Al. We still, uh, we still have questions coming in and if people have questions for, um I’m going to open them up right now for both Al or Scott. Um, a couple of them, we’ve gotten questions on, um, what methods of education do you use to educate fans regarding your recycling? Um, do you do it mainly before the game, or during the game? Do you, um, I think we heard a lot from Scott on that, is there anything additional you have on that, Scott, or have we pretty much heard about your education efforts?
Scott: Well, we use the Captain Plastic piece as kind of our promotional item in between innings we announce that. So, and we have Captain Plastic walking the concourse throughout the game too. And he’s actually become pretty popular with photo opportunities, so, uh, he helps get the message out pretty well.
Judy: Al, how do you educate your fans?
Al: Well, there are a couple of ways. We’re in the ticket packets. So we alert the people that recycling will be available at tailgate venues. We have, uh, some information about the blue bag program. Uh, we do get in the student paper, the Collegian, a lot of students attend the games. Uh, there are two very large video boards we’ve made a couple of PSA’s that athletics has been very gracious to let us run. At the end of this season, because we set a record with 111 tons, and our student, uh, Staters did it, the Staters actually, it was, it was about a 20-second PSA where they came up right before halftime and, uh, “Hey folks, thank you Penn State fans. We recycled 111 tons, that’s going to support the United Way. Thank you for pitching in, and we thought you’d like to know” and there’s these kids with their bright…incidentally we don’t use Penn State blue and white, we use, uh, PENDOT green, so the kids are very visible in the venue, cause there’s a lot of vehicles and movement around, so they’re easy to see. Uh, so there they are in the bright green shirts, and that was a nice message, and we got a little round of applause for that from the folks in the venue. So, we use the video boards, we use the local paper. We’re on the radio and television, people do talk about supporting the recycling at Penn State and Beaver Stadium. And, so with all of those things combined, uh, just like, uh, Scott said it’s going to get to some person. And we also have a, uh, hotline, it’s just an information hotline that is included in the packet that you can dial up and press Beaver Stadium and we tell you what we have on stock for waste management.
Judy: Great, well thank you so much, we’re almost out of time for questions. Do either of you have, um, any last minute advice? Any challenges you had that you could tell people how to quickly overcome? Or any, any general advice?
Al: Well, uh, I’ll go first because it’s a short story. In the very beginning, uh, when we did the recycling, we, after that first game in 1995, we couldn’t wait to come out and see the tons of recycling as pristine and clean. And I remember Joanne Shaffer and I came on the Sunday after the first game and Steve Krentzman showed up and we looked in that first bin and we almost threw up. It was so disappointing. Uh, so I would tell all of you that once you start it, and this is what Steve Krentzman said to Joanne and I “Look, you’re trying to change decades of behavior, don’t be disappointed, it’ll catch on.” And really, by the middle of that season, the people started to get it. We kept talking about the United Way, we put the numbers up on the board. We really pushed it out there and now the program is an automatic. People come prepared and want to be part of the venue, so I would tell you, don’t get discouraged. If you’re going to do this, find that low-hanging fruit and make sure that, uh, cross wise and venue-wise and process-wise that you have everything, uh, in place and stay the course. And you’ll be successful.
Closing
Judy: Ok, thanks Al. Scott do you have anything real quick?Scott: Al, great advice. The low-hanging fruit is something we use quite often. Um, look around see what people are doing, but look at your, where you are, what your situation is and see where you can be successful and build on small successes and eventually you’ll have a great program. Um, Judy you may mention, I think our presentations will be available on PDF’s through the website.
Judy: They will be.
Scott: and, uh, I would invite anyone to come visit us here at Safeco Field if we could be of any help, and if Judy doesn’t pump it I will. The EPA’s Wastewise and Energystar programs are great programs that are voluntary programs to sign up for and a great way to get involved and get ideas on how to improve your recycling and your energy conservation efforts.
Judy: Ok, thank you Scott. And, I’d like to thank Scott and Al for taking time from their busy schedules to share their programs on stadium recycling with us. Most of all, we’d like to thank you for dialing into this RCC Web Academy. This program is designed for you, so please complete our survey. Give us feedback on how we can meet your needs. Um, in particular I’m interested if you have any thoughts on venue recycling webinars that you would like to hear, anything in particular you’d like us to focus on, please let us know. And please check our RCC Web Academy site, if you want to see this in the future, it should be up there. And also, we will have answers to the questions, um, that we didn’t answer, and those many questions that we could not answer today due to a lack of time. And I hope, uh, you will join us all for next month’s RCC Web Academy session on Green Marketing Claims. So please sign up for the Thursday, February 19th RCC Web Academy program. It starts at 1 pm, eastern time. Thank you.
Caller: Thank you Judy.
Judy: Bye Bye
Justin Crane: With that we will conclude the call. We thank everyone for their participation.