Recycling Systems

From a solid waste management perspective the music event industry still relies on outdated and ineffective public place recycling systems to reduce waste being directed to landfill and/or recovering valuable resources. In some cases there is no public place recycling systems with all material being sent to landfill.

Traditional public place recycling systems typically use 2 bins (1 for waste & 1 for recycling) and are placed together to create a “waste/recycling” station. This approach requires double the number of bins to be placed around the event and additional cleaning staff to place and empty bins. It is in fact a costly and ineffective waste and recycling system to implement and operate.

If we look at a typical 20,000 person event it will generate approximately 80,000 to 100,000 drink containers. With current public place recycling rates of 10% to 40% this means that up to 70,000 containers end up in landfill per event. With 100’s of major events, festivals and tours in Australia each year this is an enormous and unsustainable waste of resources.

The GPA recycling system is a proven cost effective environmental winner with its success relying on simple on economics. By placing an economic value on the container (in the form of a deposit) punters are financially encouraged to do the right thing and return their empty containers to one of the event’s or festival’s recycling centres.

Results to date have been outstanding with recycling rates ranging from 80% to 95%. That is a massive reduction in resources being diverted away from landfills.