How to Organise for a Waste-Free Event: A Not-so-Comprehensive Guide

For over 7 years, we've been curious about and exploring the best practices for running waste-free events. We’ve made mistakes, iterated and collaborated with many event organisers over the years. This guide summarizes our experience and thoughts to date. We'll continue to learn and try new things, but we hope this summary helps you on your journey towards waste-free events. Now, let's dive in…

1. Purposeful Planning: The first, most important, and often most overlooked step should be in the event planning stage where it is decided what kind of event is being created and what the purpose of the event is. Applying the waste hierarchy to the situation, there are opportunities to achieve the purpose of the event and design out much of the consumption in the event design stage. For example, if the focus of the event is local performers, is there an opportunity to place the performance in a location adjacent to existing local businesses who, with some supplemental reusables and additional seating, can accommodate the event-goers with their existing facilities?

2. Simplify and Share the Love: Often, much of the event waste occurs due to the requirement to bump in and out all the consumption of the day and all the packaging that comes along with it. Another option to consider is simplifying the food and drink options and providing it for free. Many people in our communities are struggling right now, so why not reduce costs in one area and ensure everyone at your event gets access to nourishing food? This option also ensures you aren't putting needless cash flow risk onto our beloved food and drink vendors who will be the ones suffering if people can't afford to buy their products. Consider using your event budget for the things that are most important to your event. Simplifying the event towards its purpose and prioritising the event budget to the most important resources for the community can be the most impactful way to have the most impact where its needed while reducing the impact of waste. Better yet, consider a collaborative approach to event design and creation with your local community to engage with what their needs are and how best to address that through the event design.

3. Embrace the Reusable Revolution: We love the food and drink vendors we get to work with, and often the style of events that we work at requires our food and drink vendor colleagues to arrive and nourish us all. Often the focus of an event can be showcasing these amazing local vendors to the community. Either way, when food and drink vendors are a part of your event, here are some guidelines on how to do it with the least impact. Obviously, the first step is to stock vendors with reusables. This means communicating prior to the event what reusables will be available for them so they can adjust their presentation and price before the event. Keep the consumption vendors in a single location that is demarcated and has adequate seating and locations to enjoy their meal/drink/treat. It is so much easier when reusables are used in a single location. This can even be an invisible barrier by arranging food and drink vendors in a circle and having clear entries and exits to the food and drink area.

4. Guide the Way with Style: Us humans are social beings. We respond to social cues and what the people around us are doing. On that note, it's important to make the reusable return location very visible so everyone can both see where to return their own reusables, but more importantly, see everyone else returning and think, "Ah, this is a normal thing that happens in a location like this". I've had many people give me grief about the utmost importance of signage. The reality is, people rarely look or pay attention to signs. I've had people standing right in front of the sign saying "return your plate here" and say, "I just simply have no idea what to do with this plate." Yet often in food halls, on mine sites, or even some restaurants around the world ask you to bus your tray of crockery to a box next to the kitchen. It is totally normal in these places and it can be totally normal at your event too. In saying that, better than signage is a smiling human giving some guidance at the event. It's also important to have event staff wandering the event guiding people where to return their reusables and making sure vendors are fully stocked with reusables. At the return station it also really helps to have personnel there to sort reusables from compost, and separate any residual (hopefully brought in from outside the event) recycling or landfill. I like to think of the conversations, smiling faces, and human interaction as the seeds of change and the signage as the nutrients to help those seeds flourish. Good signage will be informative through imagery. The best signage has clear, photo images of the actual items that go into each collection bin, supported by simple language. It’s important for the signage to stand out, so the bigger, the better. But think of signage as the support at the end once all the important aspects are in place.

5. Deal with the Duds: With some preparation and good event design, event waste can be reduced to reusables and compost with everything else being brought from outside the event. Food and drink vendors often have a bag of unsorted waste with a mix of food, soft plastics, cardboard etc. which they want to dispose of at the end of the event. Consider providing a service to support them to sort it. Many event organisers request that vendors take their own waste back to dispose of it themselves. This is fine but let's remember that as event organisers we have asked them to come and nourish our community so we also need to take some of the responsibility for the waste they create. Consider offering a price reduction in event fee if they take their waste back or offering a free service to sort or dispose of their waste at the event. Or as we have learnt with encouraging reusable coffee cups, charging a fee can be more impactful than offering a discount. Consider lowering the overall cost for vendors and charging an additional fee for vendors who need to dispose of their waste at the end of the event. Now some vendors just will not play ball with reusables and the unfortunate reality is we need to keep a register of those vendors so they aren't invited back. And until there is any kind of legislative force to manage waste/resources properly, there will be plenty of other wasteful events that those vendors can go and attend.

6. Trust in Community Awesomeness: One last point about reusable losses. Us humans have an aversion to loss in a way that often stops us from trying something new and taking risks to creating something beautiful. We’ve also been told for years that we live in a competitive world where everyone is trying to do one over on their neighbours. The reality is, most people are as likely to return their reusables as you are. Most people are open to cooperation and collaboration, particularly if everyone around them is doing the same. All we can do is create an environment for cooperation and collaboration and trust that our community is freaking awesome, which it probably is, if you give them a chance. On that note, we at GO2CUP are still out there collaborating with our amazing event manager colleagues and we're looking forward to continuing to be curious, trying new things, and keep improving the events we are fortunate to attend to make them more impactful and to help connect our communities. The waste-free part of it is just a bonus.