Composting at Twilight
Sustainable Event Planning
Team Members
- Samantha Siragusa
- Reema Garabadu
- Hazel Zevos
- Emily Gronlund
- Ayman Khan
- Nethra Ranjendran
Overview
My team and I were given the opportunity to bring composting to the 40th Anniversary of Athens beloved Twilight Bike Race. Twilight is an annual family-friendly bike race held over 2 days in downtown Athens that brings professional cyclist to Athens. Throughout the Spring 2019 semester, we worked with our mentor, Joe Dunlop (Director of Waste Reduction at Athens-Clarke County Recycling Division), to make this project successful. In such a short time we were able to meet with stakeholders, contact vendors, create flyers, conduct a practice event, advertise, reduce waste at Twilight, and deliver a Zero Waste Event Guide to Athens-Clarke County.
School Lunch Challenge
The School Lunch Challenge is a competition that takes place each year where teams compete to make the best school lunch while still following the standards. With over 200 guest in attendance, this served as our practice event to divert waste through composting. At the event, we collected waste from guest and sorted it into compost, recycle, or trash bins. We also manned a booth with educational information about composting.
We were successful at this event, as we diverted 87% of the waste produced from the landfill!
Our numbers break down as follows:
73% compost
13.5% recycle
13.5% trash
Overall, composting at the School Lunch Challenge was successful. Although we were much too busy sorting materials to use our educational booth set up, we still had many teachable moments with the other School Lunch Challenge Volunteers.
Twilight
The 2019 Twilight bike race occurred the weekend of April 26-27th. We worked throughout the race day on Saturday. At Twilight we set up compost, recycle, and trash bins at the two entrances/exits from the food court. Throughout the day we monitored the waste to ensure no contamination and educated the community on our zero waste initiatives. At the end of the night, we cleaned up all the bins and then weighed each category of waste. Each vendor was supposed to use compostable or recyclable plates or cutlery. Some completely complied, some half complied, some thought they complied but did not, and others did not comply at all. In the future, we think the best strategy is to purchase in bulk and have vendors buy the materials on the spot.
We are excited to announce that we diverted a total of 2680 pounds of waste from going into the landfill. This was from the food court alone as we were not able to monitor where all the waste went if attendees left the food court. Of the 2680 pounds of waste, 520 pounds were from compost, and 2160 pounds were from recycling. We only had 1540 pounds of trash go into the landfill. We were able to divert almost double that from ending up in the landfill. Together we worked over 40 hours on race day. We had teachable moments with community members, and after directing them on what waste goes in which bin, when they came back, they were able to do it on their own.
Future Impact
At future events we recommend getting many volunteers to sign up for shifts throughout the entire weekend, so we can monitor the bins on Friday as well. In the future we hope that compost bins will be as abundant as recycling bins are in Athens.
Through our experience, we created an Athens Zero Waste Event Guide. This guide is filled with helpful information on what to do and what not to do to be able to put on a successful zero waste event. The hope for this guide is to be used at future Athens events such as the AthHalf and AthFest.
We are proud to say how many people took notice and interest in our project. We hope through informing the public on the importance of reducing waste, composting at events can eventually become as abundant as recycling.
Reflection
Although I learned a great deal in each class I have taken, I gained an incredible amount of knowledge, skills, and perspective through my capstone experience. Throughout this experience, I have been able to take each sphere of sustainability and apply it to one project. In regard to the ecological sphere, composting builds upon this sphere. Anything that was once alive can be composted. The product of the compost can be used as soil for plants. This soil is incredibly healthy for plants to grow in; therefore, can promote plant growth and biodiversity. The environment is a constant cycle of energy, water, and waste. With composting we are able to observe this constant cycle. As far as the economic sphere, I learned that even though compostable or recyclable plates or cutlery are a little more expensive than plastic options, some businesses refuse to invest in them. I want this to be the norm, where businesses are expected to invest in zero waste products. A possible way to make this happen, is to say they cannot be a vendor unless they can reduce their waste. When it comes to the social sphere of sustainability, we experienced this sphere a lot. Specifically, promoting sustainability, advertising that composting will be at Twilight for the first time, increasing vendor participation in waste reduction, engaging the public, and increase participation and understanding. Through the Athens community, I hope that we can develop more zero waste events in order to show society that we can conserve our resources and how we as humans can apply this to our lives each day.
Overall, this process increased my sustainability knowledge and awareness in ways I did not know it could. It was a great feeling being able to take all the knowledge I accumulated from my four years in undergrad and apply it to a project that was successful and made a huge difference. Although it was frustrating at times when people were not understanding waste reduction, when random people came up to me and said wow what you’re doing is great, made it all worth it. Throughout this process I learned that some people have not been as educated on the subject of sustainability as I have. They do not understand the importance because they simply have never been taught the importance. Throughout my future career, I hope to incorporate education in other future projects I am a part of.
