Sustainable event managment and resource recovery! It takes work, it takes time, it takes experience.
Waste Free Oregon can show you how.

Our name says much about who we are and what we do. Waste Free Oregon -- it's a goal, it's a lifestyle. It's a business that's in the business of educating event promoters, staff, volunteers and patrons on the best practices in event recycling and sustainable event management. The most important lesson -- It's not OK to throw it all in the landfill. Instead of resources being lost, they are recoverd by recycling, composting and reusing them ...

2011

Waste Free Oregon is hired to protect events from throwing material into the landfill unnecessarily. We do that by looking at all the materials generated by an event then seperating out those materials that can be diverted from the landfill. By diverted I mean -- recycled, composted, reused ... re-anything but thrown in the landfill. The Eugene Marathon is one of our favorite events. Last year we managed to divert over 80% of the materials generated by the event. It takes time, planning and a huge amount of hard work to get past the 80% mark but even at first time events Waste Free Oregon can often achieve a 70% diversion.
          Different events require different approaches but in general we use a combination of education, seperation and sorting to achieve the desired results. In general we provide the following services:

Pre-event:
• Consult and coordinate with event staff regarding best practices in recycling for your event. Planning sessions will involve: event promoter, food vendors, site crew and local haulers.
• Volunteer Recruitment – in many ways our most important job.
During the event:
• Set up and maintenance of public bin collection system throughout the event. At most of our events we employ the Clear Stream collection system with bins being provided by the County. This system has been in use for a number of years locally and is well received by the public.
• Set up and maintenance of appropriate compost and recycling bins for food vendors. The needs of food producers are much different than those of the public – larger rolling bins, are employed as well as “vendor recycling areas.”
• Set-up safe and efficient transfer station and sort area. Assessment and sorting of all materials brought to the station.
• Hand-sorting all compostable materials to eliminate non-compostable contaminants.
• Hand-sorting all recyclable materials to eliminate contaminants and retrieve returnables.
• Maintain liquids recovery system
• Monitor all bins, drop boxes, dump boxes and containers within the transfer station to insure they are being filled only with the proper materials; i.e. waste only in waste bins, co-mingled recyclables (cardboard, aluminum, plastic containers, clean paper etc.) in co-mingled bins, compostable materials only into compost bins.
• Coordinate, train and supervise volunteer staff.
Post Event:
• Maintain post-event recycling presence – until all waste generators have left the event.
• Continue transfer station/sort operation as needed during the critical event break down period.
• Breakdown & clean-up of all bins and other facilities.
• Provide promoter with detailed assessment of the event including: weights and percentages of materials diverted, evaluation of this years event and suggestions for your next event.