Anytime people peaceably assemble to protest or rally for their cause, that is, in its essence, a large scale event. What most people don’t think about is how important cleaning is for events like this is because it’s a bit different from a food festival or outdoor party.
Recently we serviced several a political rally at our State Capitol building in Sacramento for the California Nurse’s Association and the night market for the Asian American Pacific Chamber of Commerce.
For the Asian American Pacific Chamber, which expected 3500 guests, we staffed 8 cleaners, provided 100 cardboard recyclable bins, and two roll off dumpsters (one 30-cubic yard and another 40-cubic yard). In retrospect, we should have also employed the trash caddy to cart trash from the trash boxes to the roll-offs given the enormous square footage of the Capitol mall as the distance to the dumpsters was quite vast in spite of positioning each dumpster on different streets to reduce the travel time to the dumpsters.
One particular challenge that arose was the need for multiple dumpsters that became too full at the night market. With booths wanting to empty their flats into the dumpsters, this left little to no room for the rest of the garbage. This caused the dumpster to overflow and two trips had to be made by the driver to the refuse site to discard all the trash. Part of this was because the vendors discarded their pallets into the dumpsters which we did not account for in our trash estimate. If we had known beforehand, we would have ordered at least one more 30 cubic yard dumpster. As an event producer, it’s always good to communicate with your vendors as to whether they are responsible for their own trash whether that be pallets or booth decor or food truck waste from the cooks as opposed to the patrons.
We also had to go back the following day to do more cleaning because some of the vendors left after the cleaners. This happens often in which the event producer dismisses us before all the vendors have left and then they are dismayed that there is still trash left over at the site. Ultimately, this lack of planning costs more money for us to come back.
The CNA rally was attended to by 500 nurses for which we staffed 3 cleaners, provided 30 cardboard boxes (half trash-half recycling) with trash liners, and one 40-cubic yard roll-off dumpster. If this had been a food festival, or an event with more potential for waste, we would have scheduled one or two more crew members to manage the scope of work.
PopUP CleanUP is your go-to resource for all things pre, live, and post event cleaning from brand activations to political rallies.
