Sustainability: Par for the course

The weather was far from ideal at this year’s WM Phoenix Open (WMPO), but “The Greenest Show on Grass” didn’t disappoint from a sustainability perspective as WM built on its past successes to create its 12th zero-waste event. This year, the WMPO’s extensive merchandise tent offered tangible examples of how some of the recyclables generated at last year’s event found new life.

Houston-based WM partnered with North Carolina-based Unifi to recycle the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles generated during the 2023 tournament into Repreve fiber used by Peter Millar to create three styles of WMPO logoed shirts that were available for sale at TPC Scottsdale.

To date, Unifi has recycled more than 40 billion plastic bottles into polyester fiber since the Repreve brand was introduced in 2007. The fiber made from the bottles collected at the 2023 WMPO went to Peter Millar, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based clothing brand.

Founded in 2001, Peter Millar produces performance sportswear, seasonal resort apparel, tailored clothing and accessories. The company says its ethos embodies “luxury, elegance and a dedication to superior craftsmanship.” It can now add sustainability to that list.

“It’s been an initiative of ours to become more sustainable with our practices, and the fashion industry, in general, does not have a good reputation as far as reducing and reusing,” Peter Millar Director of Marketing Courtney Wilson said during a walkthrough of the company’s WMPO line. “We are trying to get better at that.”

In addition to using recycled fiber, Wilson said Peter Millar’s packaging uses 100 percent-recycled polybags and tags.

Its collaboration with WM and Unifi “challenged” Peter Millar as it involved supply chain reconfiguration.

The company worked with a factory in South America to manufacture the WMPO line, which comprises three shirts produced with fabric made from Repreve that is printed with the WMPO logo; the logo of the event organizer, the Thunderbirds; cacti; and other images representing the event. Peter Millar designed the print in collaboration with Unifi, WM and the PGA Tour.

By working with a factory in South America, Peter Millar was able to lessen its environmental footprint and improve its turnaround time versus manufacturing in Asia as it traditionally has done.

From the course and back again

While WM has separate collection bins for recyclables and compostables on-site at TPC Scottsdale for the event, all the material collected during the WMPO was brought back to the company’s Deer Valley Transfer Station in Phoenix, according to Four Corners Area General Manager David Brannon.

At the transfer station, material was hand-sorted before the recyclables went to WM’s Northwest Regional Material Recovery Facility (MRF) in Surprise, Arizona, while the organics went to the Phoenix compost facility and Arizona Worm Farm, also in Phoenix.

WM has taken several measures to make sorting recyclables from compostables foolproof, including using triangular openings in the collection containers for recyclables and round ones for compostables, which Brannon said improved the accuracy of sorting by 30 percent. The containers, supplied by Conyers, Georgia-based Pratt Industries, also are illustrated with examples of acceptable materials. Despite these measures, over-imbibers at “The Party with a Purpose” still could find it challenging to do the right thing, so presorting material at its transfer station ensures WM’s zero-waste objectives are met.

After bottles were sorted and baled at the WM Northwest Regional MRF, they were transported to the Repreve Bottle Processing Center located in Reidsville, North Carolina, for further sorting, washing and processing into flakes.

Those flakes were transported to the Repreve Recycling Center. At this location in Yadkinville, North Carolina, Meredith Boyd, chief product officer at Unifi, said the company created PET resin pellets that were as virgin-analogous in properties as possible by ensuring the stream is free of contaminants.

The PET pellets were transferred to Unifi’s melt-spinning plant, where proprietary technology produced an intermediate yarn product that resembled dental floss. The final step involved texturizing the intermediate yarn product.

Boyd said Unifi employs different technologies to elevate the properties of its Repreve yarn to ensure it performs the same way virgin polyester does in its processes as well as those of its customers.

That attention to detail ensured that Peter Millar’s dedication to quality was not compromised by using Repreve, Wilson said.

“This collection just showcases that so wonderfully,” Boyd added. “It means Repreve, in particular, is engineered to be at that highest quality standard. I think it helps folks understand recycled does not mean lower quality.”

Getting into the Green Scene

WM has been the title sponsor of the Phoenix Open since 2010, and the WMPO has been a zero-waste event since 2013. Following the 2023 event, nearly 62 percent of the materials diverted from landfill were recyclables, nearly 20 percent were compostables, 15 percent went to energy generation and slightly more than 4 percent were donated, including 18.9 tons of food and 34.3 tons of materials.

“The event represents sustainability from top to bottom,” WM Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer Mike Watson said, noting vendors must comply with WM’s requirements for compostable and recyclable food service items, or they cannot participate in the WMPO. “It’s the price of admission.”

While the WMPO lasts roughly a week, the sustainability team’s planning from setup to teardown and reporting is a months-long process. “A lot of it starts with looking at all the materials that come on-site and then starting to strategize around is that the right material? Should we be thinking about something else?” explained Eric Dixon, vice president of sustainability and environmental solutions at WM.

WM took a more prescriptive approach with food service providers initially “to set the tone.” Once the vendors started to learn about the objectives, “then they wanted to collaborate and work with us,” Dixon said. “That’s where I think we are now; it’s really just about the collaborative work.”

“Sustainability should be collaborative,” WM Advisory Services Director Lee Spivak added. “We are trying to be there for the vendors.”

Those procurement decisions are made in consultation with the material processors and are based on finding the next best use for the materials.

The course is broken down into nine zones from a sustainability operations perspective, Brannon said.

At the iconic 16th hole, the structure features three chutes that feed six compactors directly with recyclables or compostables, said Chad Bowden, Four Corners Area director of collection operations, with each compactor able to hold 6 tons of material.

During the tournament, instead of using fresh water, WM recovers water from melting ice at the bars on the 16th, 17th and 18th holes, in the Greenskeeper venue and in the Kiva Club venue to be reused in portable toilets. While the aluminum and plastic generated at the bars are recycled, certain unbroken glass liquor and wine bottles are turned into glassware by Arizona company Refresh Glass. Other glass collected on-site that is broken is color-sorted before being recycled into new glass bottles or used in landscaping applications.

To reduce confusion among the teams working at the event, he said WM coordinated the color of the bags used to collect recyclables (green) and compostables (clear) with the color of the balers used to compact the material on-site.

This year, the company also installed vertical balers on-site to bale plastic film, a change Brannon said should yield considerable savings.

Education also is an important component of the WMPO. At the Green Scene area, WM brought its sustainability and “Recycle Right” messages to the thousands in attendance. Fans could learn about recycling, zero waste, water conservation and greenhouse gas emissions reduction by interacting with WM ambassadors and participating in educational games, including a version of cornhole that tested their knowledge of recycling and composting.

Extended efforts

WM recently partnered with Dow to extend its zero-waste efforts to an LPGA event. The companies partnered on the 2023 Grant Thornton Invitational, leveraging WM’s experience at the Phoenix Open with Dow’s from the Great Lakes Bay Invitational.

Dow serves as the official sustainability resource for the LPGA and Ladies European Tour, Carlos Padilla II, head of global sports partnerships at Dow, said during the WMPO. The Midland, Michigan-based company also sponsored the WMPO and made a contribution to the WM Phoenix Open Working For Tomorrow Fund that benefits water access and restoration projects through Change The Course, renewable energy initiatives on Tribal Nations and efforts to eliminate food waste and address hunger through Waste Not, an Arizona-based nonprofit.

“Our hope is that we take some key learnings from what they’re doing here and implement that in our tournaments,” Padilla said of the WMPO. “We also have invited WM to come out to our event in June to see what we do on our side so that they can maybe implement that here.”

Watson says WM has an companywide goal to increase its recovery of recyclables by 60 percent to 25 million tons by 2030. It is leveraging technology, including automation, optimization or artificial intelligence in its operations to achieve that target.

WM operates roughly 100 material recovery facilities throughout the U.S. and Canada and has invested more than a billion dollars in recycling infrastructure in those markets. “We’re excited by those investments—the automation—and increasing the recycling tons that we can process in those facilities,” WM Vice President of Recycling Brent Bell said. He added that some households and businesses might not have access to recycling today, and WM’s investments in infrastructure could help to address that and increase the recycling rate.

For its sustainability clients, WM’s Dixon said his team collaborates with businesses and organizations of all types to provide an initial needs assessment and establish their baseline environmental footprints. Then the team develops and helps execute the strategies that help them achieve their sustainability goals.

“It’s really been a nice way for us to demonstrate what’s possible because, obviously, we get a lot of eyes on this every year,” he said of the WMPO. “It’s also allowed us to pilot certain things. And I would say, more often than not, it works. And it’s allowed us to move beyond materials management, which is great.”

Despite the WMPO achieving zero-waste status more than a decade ago, Dixon said WM continues to improve by sending less material to energy generation. “It really is like an ongoing, never-ending journey, which is kind of what’s fun about sustainability.”

The author is editorial director of the Recycling Today Media Group and can be reached at dtoto@gie.net. A version of this story originally ran on www.RecyclingToday.com.