{"id":2445400,"date":"2019-06-16T21:44:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T03:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/majority-of-aspens-food-wine-waste-diverted-from-local-landfill\/"},"modified":"2019-06-16T21:44:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T03:44:00","slug":"majority-of-aspens-food-wine-waste-diverted-from-local-landfill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/majority-of-aspens-food-wine-waste-diverted-from-local-landfill\/","title":{"rendered":"Majority of Aspen\u2019s Food & Wine waste diverted from local landfill"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It takes a village to divert between 70% and 90% of the waste generated by the Food & Wine Classic from the Pitkin County landfill.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too early to tell how the classic\u2019s \u201cgreen team\u201d fared from this past weekend, but last year they achieved a 75% diversion rate.<\/p>\n

That means 13.2 tons of recyclables and nearly 4.3 tons of compost that did not go into the landfill, which has about 15 years before it\u2019s full.<\/p>\n

The local effort is the envy of festival organizers around the country, where a 20% or 30% diversion rate is considered aggressive, according to Devin Padgett, producer of special projects for Food & Wine.<\/p>\n

Padgett\u2019s team achieved their highest diversion rate in 2016 with 92% of all waste being recycled.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a landmark,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s unheard of in the land of festivals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Padgett attributes the success of the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen to the on-the-ground work of Jeremy Frees, who manages the all-volunteer, 150-person green team.<\/p>\n

Frees, who works for Carbondale-based Mountain Waste & Recycling,<\/a> said the reason the festival has such a high diversion rate is because of the micro-management of every single person in the Grand Tasting Tent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 5,000 people here and we are engaging with every single person,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At nearly every turn, there is a station in the tent that is manned by at least two volunteers who help festival-goers dispose of their rubbish into three different bins \u2014 recyclables, compost or trash.<\/p>\n

There are signs posted all over the tent indicating what should go where but Frees said they learned over time that isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t pay attention to signs, so the second layer of defense is the green team standing there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The same goes for what\u2019s being put in the dumpsters outside of the venue.<\/p>\n

Frees\u2019 team makes sure that anything that\u2019s going to be recycled isn\u2019t contaminated.<\/p>\n

He told the story of a past festival in which bags of compost material generated by a cooking demonstration were thrown into the dedicated dumpster but he soon discovered that tiny Tabasco bottles got into the mix.<\/p>\n

So he took it upon himself to get in the dumpster and pick them out.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that kind of pride and care that everyone on the team carries which makes the green program work.<\/p>\n

The dumpsters set up Monarch Street behind the Grand Tasting Tent are predominately for compost and recyclables; the trash container is miniscule in comparison.<\/p>\n

The festival has been working on the green effort since the early 1990s, and organizers are constantly finding ways to improve.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver a decade ago, we had a lot more trash containers,\u201d Frees said.<\/p>\n

The team also works with vendors and sponsors to ensure they understand where the bar has been set.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what the expectation is when you come to Food & Wine,\u201d Frees said. \u201cThese guys know what we\u2019re about and they understand the world of sustainability.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s become part of the psyche of the event,\u201d he added. \u201cI wish more events did this and cared this much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liz O\u2019Connell Chapman, the city of Aspen\u2019s environmental health specialist, said Food & Wine goes above and beyond what the local government<\/a> requires of events.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey take the initiative and do some things that we wouldn\u2019t expect them to do,\u201d she said. \u201cTheir diversion rate is astounding.\u201d<\/p>\n

csackariason@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It takes a village to divert between 70% and 90% of the waste generated by the Food & Wine Classic from the Pitkin County landfill. It\u2019s too early to tell how the classic\u2019s \u201cgreen team\u201d fared from this past weekend, but last year they achieved a 75% diversion rate. That means 13.2 tons of recyclables […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2445400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 20:23:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2445400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}