|| Green Events

Summit County Special Event Vendor
GREEN EVENT GUIDELINES

Download a PDF of Green Event Guidelines

Summit County is striving to make its special events as green as possible, and we need your help as a vendor to help us make that happen.

Events produce a lot of excess waste – half of which is from food packaging! Fortunately, Summit County has an extensive recycling program. At most events, we have Zero Waste Tents for both RECYCLABLES and COMPOSTABLES. By carefully selecting your materials, you can help us reach for zero waste at our events!

Help REDUCE waste before it starts:
• Avoid single serving condiments (mustard, ketchup, mayo, sugar etc) – instead opt for bulk containers.
• Please, no Styrofoam plates, cups, or containers. Styrofoam (#6) is not recyclable in Summit County. There are many alternatives to Styrofoam for both hot and cold applications which are cost competitive with non-recyclable Sytrofoam.
• Consider finger foods that don’t require utensils.

Choose products packaged in RECYCLABLE materials, such as:
• Aluminum Cans
• Aluminum Foil
• Plastic Bottles
• Glass

Try COMPOSTABLE products:
• All paper plates and napkins
• Wax-lined paper products, including boats, plates, and cups
• Corn-based plastic cups
• Potato or corn-based plastic cutlery

Use ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY products, like:
• Recycled-content paper products (napkins, paper towels, plates, etc).
• Try “Tree-Free” materials, like plates and bowls made from sugar cane

At the EVENT, please help us to recycle:
• Break down and flatten cardboard boxes and use designated recycling bins/locations.
• If you generate a large quantity of recyclables in food or beverage preparation at your booth, please ask an event coordinator if you can have a recycling a bin to place behind your booth.
• Please, please do not throw trash in our designated recycling bins! All trash and recycling bins are clearly marked as such.

For more information on our efforts of for assistance in finding products or “greening” your booth,
please contact our partner in this effort, the High Country Conservation Center,
at (970) 668-5703 or info@highcountryconservation.org.

|| What’s Recyclable and What’s Not?

Where do I find these products?

Most products can be found at “regular” stores (like Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, grocery stores, etc.) and are available through food service distributors like Sysco. The trick is to shop for recyclability, specify what you want, and avoid non-recyclable products, like Styrofoam.

Remember – if it doesn’t say it’s made from recycled paper, it’s not!

For specialty items (like tree-free papers and biodegradable plastic products), there are a few sources:

• Locally, Sanitary Supply in Silverthorne carries these products (877-504-1383 or contact Dan Driver at cell # 970-401-1517)

On the web, some sources are:

www.ecoproducts.com
www.biosmartpackaging.com
www.biodegradablestore.com

|| Zero Waste or Darn Near...

Guidelines for Zero Waste Tents:

Compost = all food scraps (including dairy and meat**); all biodegradable “plastic” cutlery and cups; paper coffee cups, paper plates, paper boats, napkins, and other paper products; wax paper.
**Dairy and meat are accepted for commercial compost collection unlike backyard composting (read more here).

Recycling = all containers including glass, aluminum, tin, and #1 and #2 plastic (cans, bottles, etc); cardboard and paperboard in side pockets; mixed paper, including newspaper, office paper, magazines, flyers, etc. in front pocket

Trash = whatever else is left, but generally plastic cups and films (bags & wrap), styrofoam, & coffee cup lids.

Common questions:

Q: How can I tell if it’s a biodegradable plastic?
A: Cups generally have a green band around the bottom that says “Compostable.” But other than that, you need to check with the vendor as they are hard to distinguish from regular plastic. Usually, vendors want you to know they are using biodegradable plastic and some events have only biodegradable plastic allowed – check with event coordinator if this is one of those events. When in doubt, throw it out (in the trash)!

Q: What? Paper can go in a compost bin?
A: Yes! Paper is a highly biodegradable material and also provides a good source of carbon for the compost. Paper products like napkins and plates CAN NOT be recycled with mixed paper because the fibers are too short.

Q: What happens to the compost?
A: The Summit County Government has started a large scale commercial composting program at the landfill and this material will be fed into that program and turned into great soil amendment.

Q: Do the “plastic” cups and cutlery biodegrade in a backyard bin?
A: Theoretically they will, but it would take a very long time – they are designed for commercial composting facilities, which have controlled conditions and high heat and moisture.

|| Why a Zero Waste Culture?

Main findings from Stop Trashing the Climate include:

• A zero waste approach based on preventing waste and expanding reuse, recycling, and composting is one of the fastest, cheapest, and most effective strategies to protect the climate.

• Significantly reducing the amount of materials landfilled and incinerated has climate benefits comparable to closing one-fifth of all U.S. coal-fired power plants.

• The one-way flow of materials from extraction, processing, and consumption to disposal directly contributes to climate change. Waste disposal is linked to more than one-third of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions; new resources must be continually extracted to replace those buried or burned.

• Landfills are a top source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and landfill gas capture systems are not an effective strategy for preventing methane emissions to the atmosphere. The global warming impact of methane emissions in the short term is 72 times greater than CO2 and is three times greater than reported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Berkeley Model: Less Waste
On the first day of spring in 2005, Berkeley’s city council unanimously approved a zero waste resolution—one of the first in the nation. The resolution officially adopts a 75 percent waste reduction goal for 2010, and establishes a zero waste goal for 2020. What Does Zero Waste Mean? If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned, or removed from production. The goal is to combine aggressive resource recovery and industrial redesign to eliminate the very concept of waste. Eventually, the community’s resource-use system will emulate natural cyclical processes, where no waste exists. Check out more from the Ecology Center here.

Check out the October 19, 2009, New York Times article Nudging Recycling From Less Waste to None by Leslie Kaufman...
Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations. The movement is simple in concept if not always in execution: Produce less waste. Shun polystyrene foam containers or any other packaging that is not biodegradable. Recycle or compost whatever you can. Though born of idealism, the zero-waste philosophy is now propelled by sobering realities, like the growing difficulty of securing permits for new landfills and an awareness that organic decay in landfills releases methane that helps warm the earth’s atmosphere. Read more here.