A Visible Difference

Milwaukee is the largest city in Wisconsin. About 600,000 people live in the city, and more than 1.5 million people live in the metropolitan area. Situated on Lake Michigan, Milwaukee hosts a large variety of lake-front summer festivals.

The Henry Maier Festival Park is located on more than 80 acres of lake-front property and contains many performance stages and food and beverage areas. Every year the grounds host "Summerfest," the world’s largest music festival, as well as a series of ethnic festivals each celebrating a different culture. These events draw many people and generate considerable discards from the vending of food and beverages.

In recent years the facilities and grounds staff of Milwaukee World Festivals Inc. took on the challenge of improving waste management at these events by expanding its recycling program in partnership with the City of Milwaukee.

While the City of Milwaukee does not operate a commercial recycling program, it does partner with some event organizers in the community to offer recycling services at various special events. The city recognizes the importance of special events recycling to recover materials from the waste stream and also to help promote recycling at highly attended, visible public events. Having recycling programs available away from home helps promote recycling as the norm and the expectation, regardless of the location or situation. It reinforces the importance of recycling and recovering resources.

In early 2006, the City of Milwaukee reached out to those managing the largest festivals in the area and offered assistance improving waste diversion efforts.

Vendors are prohibited from selling beverages in glass and aluminum in light of safety precautions, so all beverages are served in plastic. While the majority of beverages sold are dispensed into cups, a program to recycle those was ruled out in light of recycling market limitations. Because the festival staff noticed a trend of vendors increasing their sales of beverages in PETE (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic bottles, eventually the group settled on a single goal of establishing a successful plastic bottle recycling program.

The discussion then centered on past efforts to recycle plastic bottles and the reasons for failure. Several components of previous efforts were apparent as factors that led to failure but that could be addressed with a new system. The most obvious two involved placement of containers and the recycling containers themselves. The past effort used a container for recycling that was the same open-top barrel used for trash, but with a sign for recycling. To the average person casually moving through the crowd, there was no apparent distinction between the recycling barrels and the trash barrels. The only distinction relied on the optimistic thinking that people would read the sign and thoughtfully separate their items accordingly rather than tossing them into the first "trash" barrel they saw. The recycling barrels collected some bottles to be sure, but they collected everything else in proportion to the overall solid waste as well. This problem was compounded by the fact that there was not a garbage barrel paired with every recycling barrel. That would be easy enough to fix, but what about the recycling container?

What could be used to collect recyclables that would be visually distinctive enough from the garbage barrels to halt that common automatic reaction of pitching an item at the first sight of any container? All containers can look inviting to somebody wanting to get rid of something.

At least at that time, there was not widespread awareness outside of recycling professionals of the various types of containers specifically designed for these purposes. As Milwaukee’s recycling specialist, I introduced the festival facilities and grounds staff to a variety of suitable containers. All employed one or more of the following features: restricted openings customized to the recyclable material targeted for collection (for example, small circular openings for cans and bottles, narrow slotted opening for papers); high visibility of collected contents either through use of a clear rigid plastic container or a clear plastic bag hung from a frame; and uniquely designed and eye-catching containers (for example, a container in the shape of a gigantic bottle).

After reviewing various options and discussing the pros and cons of each, a container was chosen that made the best use of the first two features, the ClearStream CycleMax container by ClearTainers, a division of Resourceful Bag and Tag (www.cleartainers.com), Palos Heights, Ill. Several comparable containers are made by other manufacturers, including the Recycle X container by Recycle Clear (www.recycleclear.com), Milwaukee.

These types of containers are ideal for special events because their simple frame construction makes them collapsible and easy to transport and store. They are visually distinctive from typical trash cans and have restricted openings. Perhaps best of all, they use clear bags that allow one to see the contents. This aspect helps in several ways. It helps the grounds maintenance staff by making it easy to quickly identify when containers are full and also makes it easy to monitor contamination. It also serves as a visual prompt to the public as to what is supposed to go in the container. People are far less likely to throw that corn cob in the recycling container when they see nothing but bottles in there. No matter how good the signage is, this visual identification factor is even more significant. In fact, one trick is to "seed" the containers with a few recyclables prior to the event so people see the correct material right away and do not start off the collection with a poor example. Seeing nothing but plastic bottles does wonders to reinforce signage that says "Plastic Bottles Only."

Before purchasing hundreds of containers to service Milwaukee’s festival grounds, a pilot program was devised to test out the containers and the new system at a single concert event.

Beyond the appropriate containers, the group discussed and planned the other details that were needed to make the plastic bottle recycling program a success. All recycling containers would be paired with garbage containers to eliminate the contamination-by-way-of-convenience/laziness factor. The grounds crew would be trained on the new program by Milwaukee World Festivals staff. The City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works would provide and service a roll-off Dumpster for consolidating the bottles on the grounds and hauling to the city’s material recovery facility. The bottles would be baled and sold along with the PET plastic from the curbside recycling program.

The program was piloted in May of 2006 at a concert event where all beverages

More recycling containers were ordered as was event signage about the program, and plans were immediately put in place to try the program at the largest venue on the festival grounds, "Summerfest." With nearly 1 million people in attendance during 11 days, "Summerfest" is Milwaukee’s cornerstone summer celebration. "The World’s Largest Music Festival" features live music on 11 stages, including a 23,000-capacity amphitheater. It runs 11 days straight from noon to midnight. Forty-five food and beverage vendors operate at "Summerfest."

This true test of the venue’s recycling program was conducted and proved to be successful, so much so that the program was offered at other events throughout the summer and was expanded for 2007 and 2008 with more recycling containers covering more areas.

In the case of the Milwaukee festival park, one concern with the X-frame containers chosen was that they might not stand up to the lake-front winds. This proved not to be a problem, as the wind blows through the frames when not much is in the bag, and as the bags fill they tend to become heavy enough on their own to withstand winds. Nevertheless, there are some tricks that can be used to combat wind issues, such as tying several frames together, for example, giving the containers additional support as they stand together.

The largest on-going challenge with the program is plastic cup contamination. For too many people, plastic is plastic, even if the sign says, "Plastic Bottles Only." Once people start to throw cups in the containers, it tends to invite more of them. While the overall percentage of contamination has not been much of a problem, the cups add more sorting labor and add to the residue at the MRF.

One possible solution to help reduce the cups in the recycling containers is to have the facilities and grounds staff periodically pull cups out to keep the visible bags showing bottles only. It also helps in that people who witness staff pulling cups out learn that the cups are not wanted in the program.

While a few loads came close to being rejected because of excessive cups, Milwaukee World Festivals facilities management has been extremely responsive to feedback from the city and has addressed program issues immediately with its staff. The ongoing communication between city recycling staff and the festival park facilities management has been one of the most important keys to the success of the recycling program.

The expansion of the venue’s recycling program as well as the minor adjustments made by staff during the first trial year of the program resulted in both "Summerfest" 2007 and 2008 each recovering four times as many plastic bottles as in 2006. Each of the last two years saw the 11-day event recover more than 260,000 plastic bottles, more than 340 cubic yards of material. The program has been highly successful and has earned recognition from the mayor of Milwaukee and from the secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. The City of Milwaukee, being known for its summer festivals and street celebrations, is proud of its involvement to help green these events through recycling.

The author is the recycling specialist for the Milwaukee Department of Public Works and can be contacted at rick.meyers@milwaukee.gov.