GWCC Hits Recycling Stride

Ga World Congress Center

The Georgia World Congress Center, a Founding Zero Waste Zones Participant, continues to evolve its sustainability practices.  With the hiring of Tim Trefzer as the first sustainability coordinator in December, 2010 (see  ZWZ Blog post, GWCC Walks Their Talk, for details), the GWCC hit their recycling stride in 2011.


“We’ve had a lot of success working with our environmentally-conscious customers on measuring and reducing the impact of their events,” says Tim 


See the July 27 press release, GWCC Working with Customers to Green Events, for the impressive recycling stats for the 2011 Microsoft Convergence (9,100 attendees) and Tech*Ed (10.250 attendees) conferences and a McDonald's internal meeting (7.000 attendees).  It is a team effort to reach 55 to 65% diversion from landfill rates:  the GWCC must offer recycling and re-purposing options and the client must be an engaged participant.  


The most impressive stats relate to the donation of the left over supplies at conference end to local organizations.  A total of 1,000 backpacks, 600 t-shirts, 60 polo-style shirts, 1,000 pens/pencils, 500 notebooks, 800 water bottles and 2,000 lanyards were distributed from the Microsoft Tech Ed event to local schools and charities.  Kudos to the GWCC for taking the lead to find organizations to receive these valuable items.


Since Tim joining the GWCC team, the recycling rates increased dramatically across the board.  Single-stream recycling increased from 54 tons in FY 2010 to 110 tons in FY 2011; recycled cardboard increased from 49 tons to 78 tons; and composted food waste increased from 290 tons to 410 tons.   Note the 2011 stats only reflect a little more than half of the year.


Stay tuned as the ZWZ celebrate with the GWCC on their successes!