Reinventing Stadium Waste Management with the Barclays Center

Problem

Barclays Center, a premier major league sports and entertainment venue, was expanding its sustainability commitment but lacked space and systems to effectively sort high volumes of recyclable materials. This led to contamination in recyclable streams like cardboard, plastic, and organic waste, increasing disposal costs and reducing diversion success. Without a scalable solution, the stadium’s waste management operations were inefficient and costly.

The Solution

Custom Equipment: To resolve the space issue, RTS created split waste compactors to allow stadium operations to sort multiple streams of materials within a single compactor and remove the risk of contamination. The compactors were quickly and easily loaded onto the hauling truck and taken to the appropriate facility.

Training and Adoption: To further increase waste stream efficiencies, RTS implemented an enhanced recycling program with the stadium’s back-of-the-house. The program included signage to clearly identify how waste should be sorted into the appropriate recycling or organics bins. The LEED-accredited RTS team also conducted a series of on-site trainings with the concessions, janitorial and operations staff to support adoption of the program and simplify the sorting and removal process.

Diversion Metrics: The stadium was able to measure its diversion goals over time as RTS automatically tracked and reported monthly totals of materials removed – including trash, recycling and organics – as well as documentation of the destination facilities. RTS also monitored the recycling drop-offs and immediately communicated with the operations team if a load was contaminated.