This past spring PopUP CleanUP serviced a zero waste event with recycling and organics separation at the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation just to the Northwest of Sacramento in Brooks, California. The Yocha Dehe Wintun are Patwin people and held a spiritual event for their tribe. We sent three cleaners to their reservation where they had volunteers teach us how they wanted the separation done.
Their goal was to create a zero waste experience where everything went back into compost or to a recycling center. This was our second rodeo attending to trash separation at an event since California passed laws SB 1383 and AB 2176 mandating landfill reduction strategies for events and organics separation to reduce methane gas production.
While this isn’t work for the clean obsessed (we do use gloves to do the separation, but it can be messy and stinky). it’s really critical for the environment and more and more events are coming to us for this service. As long as your event has a sorting station set up with a correct allocation of dumpsters for the various waste types, we can provide staffing to fulfill your zero waste goals.
The appropriate number of staff for trash separation depends upon how many dumpsters, how many dumpster locations, and if you want porters on hand at the trash can locations to prevent contamination before the trash is even brought to the dumpster. Generally speaking, we provide about two to three people per dumpster site. If you are going to employ landfill diversion strategies at your event like this, it should also go without saying that the refuse, compost, and recycling dumpsters should all be in the same location. If they are not, then you would absolutely need to have three of each type of bin in each trash can location and a porter stationed at each location to make sure refuse goes in the refuse container, the compost in the organics recycling container, and glass, aluminum, and the appropriate plastics in the recycling container. Then the trash could be carted to the appropriate dumpsters from there.
PopUP CleanUP is cleaning company specializing in sustainable practices for large scale events.
