Waste Free Events: Save the Environment and Your Wallet

Alyssa: What has been going on in this wide, wide world of events? My name is Alyssa and welcome to this week's episode of Great Events, a podcast by Cvent.

This week we are super excited to be talking about waste and recycling at events. We are entering Earth Month here, and so we felt like it was really important to start bringing up some of these more sustainable topics to our conversations this month.

And so, I am really excited to have a special guest on this podcast. Before I introduce him, just a little context of, of, you know, why waste and recycling. You know, we recognize that this part of your program is really widely visible at the events that you host, but can be a challenge to do successfully when you have those attendees that can draw from, you know, different locations, different geographic regions where those rules for waste recycling, composting can vary.

There also can be varying degrees of importance that are placed on those waste diversion tactics within those different regions. And so taking that on where you have this microcosm of all of these different experiences can be really difficult to navigate when you're hosting at an event location.

So today I am very excited to introduce Dave Biderman, former Executive Director and CEO of the Solid Waste Association of North America, also known as SWANA. Also major thought leader in this space, in the solid waste and recycling industry. So Dave, I am very excited to have you. Welcome to the podcast!

Dave: Alyssa, great to see you and thrilled to be participating this morning.

Alyssa: Awesome. Dave, let's start with a little bit of background about yourself. So just kind of give us your, your quick hit resume of your experience in the solid waste industry.

Dave: Sure. I started as a lawyer, joined the private solid waste industry in 1997.

Served in a variety of positions, uh, was involved in trade shows and conferences for a long time. And then eight years ago, I became the executive director at SWANA, the Solid Waste Association of North America, which is the biggest solid waste association in the United States with more than 10,000 members.

We hold conferences all over the country, and it was a privilege to lead that organization and it was interesting to see how members interests in having our events be more sustainable evolved over those eight years.

Alyssa: Interesting. What's some of the other areas of focus does SWANA bring to the industry at large?

Just education, outreach type things? What else are you guys working on or have worked on?

Dave: Sure. SWANA is primarily about education and networking. So SWANA is the professional association that certifies a solid waste professionals in various lines of business, uh, whether they're landfill operators, recycling coordinators, et cetera.

SWANA also has a very strong safety program that I was proud to have led for a while because collecting garbage is actually the seventh most dangerous job in the United States, which is an improvement over five, six years ago. And so we need to really continue to provide resources to people in the industry so that they can be safer and get home to their loved ones at the end of each day.

Alyssa: I wanna one up you on that with the, the most stressful job. Number four is event professionals. So I feel like we might be more on the safety and health and safety side of things, mental health and safety for our event professionals. But it's always a stat that we call out in the the planning industry here.

I did wanna call out, Dave and I go back quite a few years here. I don't think I've ever divulged this on the podcast, but I used to work in the waste and recycling industry. I worked for a hauler that was local to the DC metro area, but was very closely knit to the community here in helping the public understand all of the different waste and recycling options that they had, and did a lot of public outreach programs.

And so Dave and I met in conjunction with that kind of, you know, old colleagues in a sense. So I'm very excited to be starting this conversation up it for a new industry, but certainly applicable as a sustainability narrative is very much rising to the forefront of events that not only you host, but also that you attend.

So that is a perfect transition to the first thing that I wanted to talk to you Dave about, which is, I understand you guys host a relatively large conference in San Diego this past year, Waste Con 2022, and you went through the planning process of trying to host a sustainable event with also waste and recycling factored into that whole plan.

So can you walk me through just kind of the good, the bad, and the ugly of that whole process and, and hosting your event in San Diego.

Dave: Sure Alyssa, so Waste Con is SWANA's biggest annual conference. It attracts between 1500 and 2000 people each year. This was our first really post-Covid Waste Con, and so people were really excited to come back together.

San Diego is a beautiful venue, a wonderful place to visit. Had not hosted a national solid waste conference in decades, and so people were really excited to be there. There was a large component of our audience was from the West Coast and from California, and so there's an expectation about providing certain sustainably oriented services.

You know, people wanna drink water from big bubblers, not individual plastic water bottles. People wanna know that the leftover food is gonna be composted. There needs to be recycling bins everywhere, and single use plastic is very much frowned upon. We had a few challenges because the venue didn't necessarily have all of the things we wanted to be able to satisfy all of the of the needs that we had.

There was a little bit of feedback from some of SWANA's members about not being as sustainable as possible, and I think that was a lesson for SWANA for the future that we're gonna have to focus additional attention on that aspect of producing an event. Which in the waste sector is particularly challenging because you think everybody knows what's recyclable and what's not recyclable because they're in the waste industry.

But Melissa, as you know, maybe they do know, maybe they don't. But part of the problem is that at that point where they have to make a decision, maybe they're not paying attention.

Alyssa: How do we make that easier for our attendees? You know? Is there communication strategies? I know I was involved in a lot of conversations around labeling.

Certainly, and we can go into detail on this too, if we want to go down that avenue, but the difference between single stream recycling, dual stream recycling, multistream recycling. You know, it's different in every location where you're hosting. Certainly San Diego has its own process that might look vastly different than say, Las Vegas, for example.

So how do we communicate those differences in those hosting cities, venues, what have you.

Dave: So I think some of the best practices in this space are communicating consistently and communicating frequently. So you have to communicate when people register. Like this is gonna be a sustainable event. Or, you know, we're not gonna be providing water bottles, or you need to message before people set foot in the venue that there's something about this event that has a sustainable or green aspect to it.

But I think the most important thing is to have really clear labeling in the venue itself that makes it obvious what someone is supposed to with their leftover stuff, whether they're eating, drinking, or breaking down an exhibit booth. One of the things that we've seen at trade shows over the last five, six years is the proliferation of stuff ending up in garbage cans.

People don't take paper anymore. People don't wanna pick up the flyer, and a lot of people, particularly in the waste industry, still have these one page flyers that you know, market their goods and service. And people would much rather communicate by email and stuff like that, and there's a tremendous amount of material that's going to waste as a result, and we need to message better about where those materials need to go.

Alyssa: Yeah, and that's funny because that's definitely related to the business that Cvent is in, which is around the digitization of the event experience. And so I know that we even offer solutions for exhibitor, you know, lead capture devices that can also offer digital versions of what previously were those, you know, paper flyers and things like that.

So I think if we lean into those as event organizers and say, this is a sustainable event. This is the expectation of how you will deliver those. And also, by the way, here's data that supports, nobody wants those paper flyers anyways. It can help limit, you know, the, the resources that are being exhausted at an event experience like that.

I love that. That's definitely related to the business that we're in here.

How do you deal with those individuals who are less motivated? I would say, I'll put in quotes, "less motivated individuals" to participate. Right. Even if you have the labels, even if you have communicated pre-event, during event, you know, how do you encourage that behavior change for, you know, somebody who's not West Coast oriented will put it that way?

Dave: So that's a great question because the same way that we have trouble getting some people to recycle in their homes or in their businesses when people are traveling at an event, there may be, they may be even less susceptible recycling because it's not part of the culture for them. It's not part of how they were raised or, or, or the lifestyle that they have.

Whether there's an informal peer pressure type thing that can happen. Maybe there's an opportunity to provide more recycling or composting bins and fewer waste bins. I think in that way we psychologically incentivize some of the people who are trying to. To do the sustainable thing and not put the food in the garbage, but maybe put the leftover food in a compost bin, or maybe take that water bottle and put it in the recycling bin because it's convenient.

So we have to make it as convenient as possible and not necessarily expect everybody to read the label and to do the right thing. And remember what was on the website about sustainability. When it's 4:45 in the afternoon after a long day on a show floor and you're holding an empty water bottle, you just wanna throw it in the nearest bin.

So we need to make sure that that bin is a recycling bin.

Alyssa: I also think that there's a part of this to understand all of the resources that are being utilized or disposed of at your events. If it is all plastic water bottles and paper, and then food waster, we don't need the waste bins, right? And so that I think, comes a lot to do with the planning process and thinking one step ahead of where your attendees minds will be at and almost beat them to the punch in a sense.

Put the bins where you expect the types of materials to be disposed of so that you're automatically capturing and diverting those materials. I know that was a lot of work that I was doing in my previous role. Situated more on on the business within a business setting, less so about an event, but similar methodology there, Dave, to what you're talking about, the differences between at-home recycling and business recycling or event recycling.

Trying to be two steps ahead of where those audiences are, I guess at any given moment in time, which I think is very interesting. We can apply those learnings.

Dave: No, that's exactly right. I think that some of the principles that we've learned over the last eight to ten years about how to get people to recycle more and recycle better, which are two different things, but if we can get people to do those things, we can preserve landfill space for the stuff that really needs to go to a landfill and keep paper and plastic and metal and glass in the circular economy, which is good for the economy and also good for the planet.

And that's what the waste industry's all about. It's about doing good at the same time that hopefully we're doing good for the planet.

Alyssa: I do have a question because I don't know what the latest stats are, but where are we on landfill? How close to being full are we, I guess is the way to ask this question for the layman, but are there any stats related to that? What's the latest on that, Dave?

Dave: Sure. So we have more than adequate landfill space in almost all of the United States. I think on a national basis, we have about a 12 year capacity, but there are certain parts of the country that are very landfill deprived in the northeastern United States. Parts of New England don't have a lot of excess landfill space, and so stuff out of Massachusetts is going all over New England and into Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The biggest landfill on Long Island is closing next year. Lord only knows what's gonna happen to all of that garbage coming through New York City by rail or truck and then getting disposed of somewhere else. We recycle about a third of our garbage right now, but we need to do better. The USEPA has a 50% goal by 2030, and I played a role in helping EPA develop that goal and its national recycling strategy, and I think residential is important. In business it's important, but also in the commercial space at events because millions upon millions of Americans attend conventions and meetings are in hospitality, and that is a real good area for us to be able to move the needle on recycling.

Alyssa: Let's go back to San Diego for an example here. Do you find that there's a willingness of the venues and or hosting cities, cuz oftentimes those are, that's part of this delicate ecosystem of events, right? There could be the host location that's working very intimately with a venue to help establish what those best practices might look like in accordance with, with over laws or regulations.

I know Dave, you and I had talked about the regulatory environment or lack there of. And so how, how do we work better with these partners to create that strategy? Because really at the end of the day, that's what event professionals are doing. They're collaborating, they're working together. They're bringing all of these suppliers together to craft that experience.

And so this is just, but one of many of those experiences, we need to consider the sustainable component of our events as well. So any recommendations for how to better collaborate and communicate about waste and recycling?

Dave: Sure. So event planners need to identify this as a priority at the very beginning of the process.

You can't wait until 45 days before the event to say, oh, we need composting bins on the show floor. So you need to communicate this even during the contract negotiation, when you're figuring out whether or not you're going to select a site, one of the conditions that you may wanna discuss during the negotiation is the availability of recycling and composting services in the venue and what that might look like.

But then more importantly, during the walkthrough, you know, when you're figuring out where you're gonna do your events, which we typically did six months in advance of an event, you need to be looking in the back of the house. You need to be figuring out, okay, what are their capabilities. As you said, what are the local regulations that may require a venue to provide certain services?

So there's seven or eight states in the United States that mandate food waste diversion, which means that the food waste isn't allowed to go into a landfill. So they are by law, required to not put stuff in the gar, what we call the garbage. And so then we need to figure out how to get that material from the front of the house in a source separated way to the back of the house in a way that's gonna end up in a compost bin.

And the same would be true for traditional recyclables. You referred to earlier single stream recycling, which is when you mix all of the recyclables together in one bin. But some people come from a dual stream background where the paper is kept separate from the containers, the glass, the bottles, and the the metal.

And so we need to be mindful of that as we're talking to the venue. And we need to sometimes get the CBBs involved, the convention and visitors bureaus, because they may be able to provide guidance on what the capabilities are of certain venues, because it's not just about the convention. You might have an event at a convention center, but then you're gonna have an offsite at a hotel or, or a hall or a restaurant, right?

And you may bring hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of people to those events. And it's important to understand what their sustainability capabilities are as you walk through the process of making a green event.

Alyssa: Yeah, and I would say even that, we'd started with that communication plan, transferring that communication plan to any of those ancillary events, right?

There's this kind of mesh of events that can happen, especially in a conference setting, right, where the events are large and they're vast and there's lots of different pockets, events within events that are happening, but you wanna apply the same standards to your sustainability, to your waste plan across all of those interconnected pieces of the pie and not alienate any one of those elements.

So, very interesting.

Okay, next question for you Dave, cuz we did talk about this and you know, if you knew what you knew now in sourcing for Waste Con, not to say that you wouldn't go back to San Diego, right? I'm sure lovely city, but are there certain things that you would put in part of your RFP process that might look a little bit different than when you set out right? Like what are some of those lessons learned that might help our event professionals as they go to host their next sustainable event? Would you disqualify certain locations as part of this that say, oh, we, this just isn't a city that would be sustainably friendly, for example.

What are some of those thoughts around hosting cities, hosting locations, planning with the end result in mind?

Dave: So the most important thing for convention planners or event planners, just to know your audience. So there may be a conference in which sustainability may not be the highest priority. So in that instance, maybe that isn't the first thing you look at when you're planning an event.

In the waste industry, however, where we are trying to be leaders, and show people how to be sustainable. It has become an absolute top priority. And so what that means is that we need to make sure we're addressing this issue on the front end. Single use plastics that seems to be verboten forbidden in the future at National SWANA events, we got some, some feedback on that, that we shouldn't have had them anywhere.

But interestingly, some of the venues apparently don't have adequate supplies of cloth napkins and tablecloths and China, they're used to dealing with, you know, disposable paper plates cuz they're lighter, cheaper, easier.

A lot of venues still have labor shortages. And so that plays a role in figuring out how sustainable this is all going to be.

And what that all comes down to at the end is cost. It is not free to have a greener event. It's likely going to be more expensive from a event production perspective to reuse or recycle all or most of the material that's consumed on site, and then that needs to be communicated and priced in the business model.

And people need to understand, hey, the cost of the convention this year might be 10, 20, 25 dollars more. But we're doing it because of the following reasons. And while that might not be a popular thing to tell the oil refinery convention, I suspect that in the solid waste and recycling space, that would be more welcomes.

Alyssa: I love that. I also, just to add, I feel like incremental changes go a big way. I think that that is, goes without saying, we hear that a lot in the green space, but I do think that it's gotta start somewhere. So pick your battles, right? If that means hosting at a lead certified venue location so you know that there's less waste and and reduction when it comes to electricity management. That might be a place to start, right? It might not start with your waste and recycling plan. That might be a harder thing to accomplish. It might also mean hosting more locally so that you have more regional travelers as opposed to air travelers that are coming to your location, so you're reducing flight. And so that might be more of a carbon conversation, but I feel like pick your battles, pick what makes sense, and then kind of build your plan accordingly. And like I said, it really starts with kind of a first step in the right direction and then you can build your plan from there. Don't try to do it all at once. Right.

But I do. I love that feedback, Dave, on working through your RFP process, cuz that really is the starting point for a lot of our events. Obviously there's the strategy, there's the reason why, but when we actually set out to do it typically starts with. That RFP and noting your requirements and saying, this is what we need, and it, the calendar effect, right?

You know, the, the good ones will rise to the top and you'll see what it is that you need to meet, meet your objectives for your event. So I think you're gonna add something in there. 

Dave: I think what you said is absolutely right and for listeners, lead refers to the leadership and energy and environmental design.

That's a national standard and facilities are lead certified, and identifying venues that are lead certified is certainly a great step on the path to sustainability because you're right, Alyssa, if a facility is lead certified, they've already done some of the work and are gonna be predisposed to work more productively with you to achieve your environmental sustainability goals.

Alyssa: Even within the category of waste and recycling, right? There are different units of measurement that hey're held to a higher standard essentially because they've gone through that rigor of that certification. So yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Okay. My last question before we kinda get to closing remarks, the three Rs, reduce, reuse, recycle. Are there four Rs now? Because I feel like I've heard there might be four, but I still see the three sometimes. Let's debunk that myth. First of all, is it three or four?

Dave: So it's still three Rs, as far as I know, reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Alyssa: Perfect. Okay, so we cleared that out of the air.

How can we apply this thought process to events? I feel like this is more of a state of mind and it helps you design your plan. And we did talk initially here about starting with the end game in mind, and so I feel like reduce, reuse, recycle is a little bit of that foresight in your planning process.

So how can we apply that to event planning?

Dave: So in the reduced space, we've started to go away from pogram brochures. Each one of your attendee gets a thick document that has all the exhibitors and all the names and you know it's 50 pages times 2000 attendees. That's a lot of paper. We're seeing a lot more digital signage.

Directing people where to go, what to do. Again, it's important to know your audience. If your audience is mostly 60 years old and up, they have gotten used to that written material that is their crutch. And so you may need to transition and not cut the cord completely, but gradually move away from written material to digital.

But that's a huge area for reduction. So reduce. Then reuse. I'm starting to see in. That not all of the space is carpeted the way it used to be. Carpeting is not necessarily a sustainable commodity. It's only used a couple of times, and then maybe it's tossed out at Waste Con, we did not have carpet on the entire show floor. That's an area that I think event planners should be looking at and talking to the venues about. Well, what happens to the carpet after we use it? Is it carpet that was used before? If it is used before, is it cleaned? Is it because people are concerned about that? And so carpeting becomes an opportunity to reuse.

Alyssa: Interesting. That's something I've never even thought about. Right? That's opening up my eyes to a new area of reduction or reusing. Right? It could fall into either of those camps. If you don't need it, it, it's a reduction. Right?

Dave: Absolutely. And and just a quick story, about 15 years ago I was shooting a video at a landfill outside of Las Vegas, and while we were at the landfill, two or three trucks came and discouraged, voluminous amounts of carpet from what I assume was a convention center that was getting rid of, you know, 20 tons worth of carpeting.

Right? And I really wondered, wow, that's the highest use for this material? We couldn't use this for something else? And this was 15 years ago. Now I'm sure that convention center has a different practice, but the amount of material that we mindlessly throw away because it's easy or because it's cheaper, doesn't necessarily comport with the desire of our audiences, particularly our younger audiences, to be green and sustainable.

And we need to align expectations to meet those folks who are the future leaders in not just the waste industry, but all industries. So that we can all be working together productively in that area. 

Alyssa: And not to take, make it such a practical comment here, but it certainly saves cost too, right? Like that, that cost to either rip up that carpet, install that carpet, lay it down, that song and dance that we do with carpet for events, it's not super cost effective either. I know that that's some area where our meetings and events team is able to save costs and not laying down carpet. I don't think there's ever been a thought that, oh, this is a sustainable practice. But now if we can think of it as one, it validates our decision not to purchase that carpet for branding purposes, for marketing needs.

So, very interesting. I I hadn't thought about that, and we've talked a lot about recycling here today, so I don't wanna belabor that point here, but certainly bringing up the three Rs as part of this process is something that we can be thinking through at every area of our event, from exhibitor management to the brochures, to that welcome experience, those flyers.

I know that in a couple of weeks we are going to be talking to a promotional product group and talking about what types of products, solutions in that arena are sustainable, but also effective in driving that brand. How do we balance both of those needs at our events? So that should be an interesting conversation for us as.

Dave, I wanna give you kind of our last parting words here. Any closing remarks that you wanna leave with the listeners?

Dave: So people need to be thinking about the environment when they're attending events or when they're planning events. We only get one planet. There is no planet B. And although you might think that you as an individual, what difference can you make. If everybody just does one or two little.

To make their events more sustainable, to make their lifestyles more sustainable. It's gonna be good for the economy, it's gonna be good for the environment, and it's gonna be good for future generations. Meeting planners have a very, very difficult job balancing a lot of different needs and agendas, but one of them needs to be the green agenda. One of them really needs to be the interest in holding conferences that are as sustainable as possible, and that will evolve as the laws evolve, as practices evolve and as people who attend these events demonstrate more of an interest in being green in recycling as much as possible, and being willing to financially support that endeavor through paying higher.

Thank you for this opportunity, Alyssa

Alyssa: Perfect way to close out this episode. Listeners, we hope that you enjoyed this chat today as well, that you found some inspiration or some easy takeaways that could inspire or re-inspire your own sustainable event, programs, conferences, any type of event. Dave, once again, thank you so much for joining me.

Very excited to apply. My background as a trash lady to the meetings and events world. I think this was super relevant to, to our industry today.

Once again, listeners, if you do have any topics or people that you'd love to add to our 2023 lineup, dm us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or send us a quick note at greatevents@cvent.com.

Once again, my name is Alyssa and thanks for tuning in to Great Events. See you next week.