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Have you ever wondered what it’s like to work a zero-waste event? Working with garbage may not be glamorous, and understandably, it’s not for everyone. However, those of us at Walking Mountains are very passionate about waste and diversion and have no problem having fun while we get our hands dirty.

With more than 120 days of events a year in the Eagle River Valley, and our staff being at the forefront of many events across the valley, here’s a full picture of why we’re helping you sort your waste and what steps we take to make it as zero waste as possible.

Set up

When it comes to the events we work on, the setup can vary. Some events, like the Vail Farmers’ Market and Avon LIVE!, have their equipment and our team arrives to set up our ZeroHero tri-station tents. Others, like the Minturn Market and ShowDown Town in Eagle, we pack up our electric Nissan Leaf with the correlated number of tents and bins and head on over to set everything up. For other events, like GoPro Mountain Games and the Eagle County Fair & Rodeo, we set up a sorting station as these events have more waste than others.

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While setting up, we also check in with every single vendor to ensure they have compliant cutlery and plates and to ensure they feel supported and have all their questions answered to maximize our impact. Before joining these events, every vendor is sent our Zero Waste Event Guidelines to ensure expectations are clear and they have time to prepare themselves by procuring the appropriate items.

Sorting

As mentioned before, sorting varies based on the event type. At our smaller events like farmers’ markets and concerts, we can station a sustainability intern to a tent or two, and they go around sorting the tents periodically to ensure everything is in the right can and there are no mixed contaminants. At busier stations, we have one intern that helps people sort their waste.

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This also allows us the opportunity to educate people who are interested in understanding composting. A lot of people have questions about the compostability of the clear sauce cups and cutlery. An easy way to tell if something is compostable: Does it say BPI certified? On the bottom of the cup does it have a number 7 symbol and say PLA (Polylactic Acid, meaning it’s made from renewable resources like corn starch or sugar cane)? Many of our compostable service ware that may look like plastic is made from a compostable corn-based resin, made from plants.

At larger events, we still do our best to sort the waste stations by having people stationed at the tents to assist people. However, like GoPro Mountain Games, we also have a sorting station set up behind the scenes. Each bag that is picked up and carted back to the sorting station is then opened and picked through. We look at every bag and every piece of trash because it is important to us to ensure there is no contamination. We take great pride in our work.

Measuring waste diversion

At all events, once bags are sorted and ready to go, we then weigh them usually with a floor scale. We weigh every type of waste: cardboard, landfill, recycle bags, and compost bags. We then keep a detailed record of the data so we can determine how much waste was diverted. Once the bags are weighed, we toss them in the appropriate dumpsters and off they go.

What we’ve accomplished so far

For the 2024 zero waste events season, we worked over 124 days of events diverting a total of 32,690 pounds of compost, and 29,992 pounds of recycling from the landfill with a total diversion rate of 87% and 64,219 pounds total.

Our mission is to encourage events to begin considering ways to reduce their environmental footprint, rather than viewing this as the ultimate solution. We take pride in our community and the commitment of event organizers to enhance their sustainability efforts, ensuring that our mountains remain beautiful for generations to come.

Chantel Recksiedler is the Climate Action Collaborative coordinator at Walking Mountains.