Recycling On the Go 2022
From the oyster-shucking madness in March to the thrill of 4000 girls running their first 5K in November, Recycling On the Go staff were on site to collect and divert nearly 40 tons of materials for recycling and composting at 46 area events in 2022. Our small team of 8 staff worked over 1000 hours over 100 event days to show St. Louisans that recycling can happen away from home.
Over 200,000 attendees at these events were able to engage with us to learn about proper recycling; and let’s face it, it is not easy to determine what can be recycled. So please review this Stick with the Six information.
Did you know that 80% of the St. Louis region’s recycling goes to the same Republic Services Material Recovery Facilities? That means that for most people in St. Charles, Franklin, Jefferson, St. Louis City and counties, including Madison, St. Clair and Monroe counties in Illinois, whether at home or at a festival, the RULES ARE THE SAME.
Our program mission is to reduce waste going to the landfill. This is especially important for food and organics like paper and yard waste that decompose in landfills creating harmful methane. We accomplish our mission by strategically working with events to utilize recyclable and compostable service ware, and providing the staff and equipment to collect, sort and haul recyclable/compostable materials from the event.
With our staff onsite, we average a 67% diversion rate of materials from the landfill. That is, we sort out two-thirds of the total event trash to get it recycled and composted rather than allowing it to go to the landfill.
To put that into perspective, without the use of staff, just placing a recycling bin next to a trash bin at an event will only collect about 10-20% of the total waste and it will most likely be contaminated with non-recyclable materials like styrofoam, plastic bags and food wrappers, plastic utensils, food-soiled paper, and paper cups.
Plastic bags and styrofoam are very harmful to the operations of a recycling facility.
Most of the material that recycling facilities throw away on a daily basis is stuff they never wanted in the first place! The non-recyclables that people place in recycling containers. So our staff sort out the wrong stuff from the recycling container and retrieve the recyclables that were mistakenly thrown in the trash can, thus, increasing the amount of material getting recycled and reducing the amount of unwanted material going to the sorting facilities.
When we offer collection for food waste and other organics for composting, we often average over 90% diversion rate. We have a great partnership with Total Organics Recycling and St. Louis Composting who sponsor our program to provide hauling for collected materials in their bright yellow roll carts.
At our St. Louis Earth Day Festival, using staff and many volunteers, we diverted 92% of the waste from over 15,000 attendees!
All of the Schlafly events achieved over 90%; Art Outside was 98%!
Where was ROG in 2022?
We partnered with the following organizations and events bringing ROG staff to:
- Schlafly’s Stout and Oyster Fest, Art Outside, and Full Moon Festival
- Sauce Magazine’s Food Truck Fridays and Harvest Festival
- Historical Society of Missouri’s Twilight Thursday Concert Series
- Missouri Botanical Garden’s Japanese Festival and Best Of Missouri Market
- Girls On the Run St. Louis 5K Run
- Humane Society of Missouri’s Bark in the Park
- Big River Race Management’s Moonlight Ramble
- International Institute of St. Louis’ Festival of Nations
- St. Louis Association of Community Organizations’ Annual Conference
- Grove Community Improvement District’s Grove Fest
The program provided recycling equipment to several small personal events plus the following larger events:
- St. Louis County Greek Festival
- The ALS Association’s Walk to Defeat ALS
- Family Fun Day at Brightside
- St. Louis Pagan Picnic
- Route 66 Cars and Guitars in Kirkwood
- Shakespeare Festival in the Park: Much Ado About Nothing
- Lindenwood Live Concerts
- Art Hill Film Series
- Festability
- Grub and Groove in St. Louis Hills
- St. Louis World’s Fare Heritage Festival
- EarthDance Farms’ Farmers Formal
- Pride Fest in Tower Grove Park
- Bel-Nor Community Meeting
Recycling On the Go also staffed an outreach booth at the Tower Grove Park’s Saturday Farmers Markets. (insert photo of outreach booth) We engaged with about 1000 people to talk about composting, food waste and the strategies to reduce it, and collected food scraps through a subscription program. We collected 1,809 pounds of food scraps from 25 area residents over the season that were committed to NOT putting food into the trash can.
Did you know that “sell by” dates tell the store how long to display the product for sale for inventory management? They are not an indicator of food safety.
Did you know that properly storing and eating leftovers is an important part of reducing food waste?
Did you know that it is important to plan your meals around food that spoils quickly?
Avoiding food waste is one of the biggest ways individuals can impact climate change – while saving money!
And over 100 individuals did just that during our November Great Pumpkin Composting Collection event. Over 4,200 pounds of pumpkins were collected and hauled by Total Organics Recycling to the St. Louis Composting facility to get turned into a valuable soil amendment in six months!
Program sponsored by Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the St. Louis – Jefferson County Solid Waste Management District, Employees Community Fund of Boeing, Sauce Magazine, Total Organics Recycling and Republic Services.
