Thursday, May 31, 2007

Week 8, concert 8, recycling effort 8 of Sundown in the City.  Here we go again - trying to get a repeat of last week's great numbers, we changed the signage a little, reduced the number of regular trash cans slightly and had another round of pep talks with vendors.  Here are some pictures from the event:

Typical crowd.


Typical management team picture.


John Homa trying to explain his way out of a jam.  Jill and Cat.


Two good bands.


Some new type of waste the vendors showed up with today. A typical disposal setup and the staff of 90.3 FM who won our prize for the week for producing the least amount of waste by a vendor.


Typical takedown and a shot of the litter after the event.  All the trash on the ground is blown into one long row by City workers.  They suck it up with a vacuum truck.


- posted by KKB Staff at 11:15 PM

We issued a news release on the good results from the Sundown recycling and got a nice story in the News Sentinel today on Sundown recycling.  Click here to see the News Sentinel story online (registration may be required).  Here is a scan of the article:

- posted by KKB Staff at 8:30 AM

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

We spent most of the meeting reveling in our success and lamenting that Stephanie Hood has elected to leave the AmeriCorps program early.  Stephanie will be missed.  She is moving to Colorado for a pretty cool job.  See you later Stephanie.  Jill will pick up Stephanie's projects for the month remaining in the AmeriCorps program.

- posted by KKB Staff at 5:30 PM

We did a quick audit of one of two of the garbage bags from last week.  We got pretty much the same results as before - too much clean paper, foil, and way too much styro.  We pulled these bags from last week's garbage audit at the City transfer station.  We need to finish this before the weekly debriefing session this afternoon.  Here are some pics from this audit:





- posted by KKB Staff at 11:00 AM

Friday, May 25, 2007

This is the first garbage truck audit we have done.  The City of Knoxville crew gathered up all the Market Square garbage and alley garbage last night and kindly saved it for us in their compactor truck.  We met them at the City transfer station on Elm Street and they dumped it onto the tipping floor for us to go through.  We pulled the green/gray bags and weighed them.  The official results were very positive: 130 pounds of garbage from the colored bags, 580 pounds of cups from the ClearStreams and 60 pounds from the compost boxes.  770 pounds total waste, 130 pounds garbage.  We recycled or composted 83% of the waste (by weight) from Market Square during last night's concert.  We are very happy with that number.  Here are some pics from the waste audit:

Yes, this is a picture of totally gross liquid in the back of the garbage truck.  And yes, the next picture shows the totally gross liquid pouring onto the pile of garbage bags we have to pick through.


As you can see, there is plenty of cardboard and other recyclable stuff coming from the alleys behind the restaurants. The next picture is a dead rat covered with maggots and noodles. No, really, it is.


Here is a shot of several of the bags mixed in with the rest of the downtown garbage.  Here are the bags we pulled out to weigh.


- posted by KKB Staff at 10:15 AM

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Sundown in the City recycling week 7.  We are making our first big adjustment on the setup.  To us, the garbage nerds, the Sundown "waste stream" has 4 distinct parts: 1) material the public puts in the ClearStream recycling containers, 2) material the public puts in the compost boxes, 3) material the public puts in the "garbage" cans on the square and 4) the garbage produced by the Market Square businesses that usually goes out the back doors into the two alleys.  For the purposes of this project we want to know what the concertgoers are doing with their trash.  Are they using the recycling and compost containers or not?  Well, through last week, the City has been co-mingling the garbage bags from Market Square with the garbage from the alleys.  When they report the weight of garbage from the Sundown concerts, we can't separate the square weight from the alley weight and it is preventing us from "knowing" what is happening.  We had one of those "eureka" moments (see professional graphic to the left).  We asked the city to use a different color bag in the garbage cans inside the area controlled by Sundown in the City security.  Tomorrow morning we plan to go to the City transfer station and pull the colored bags from the square and weight them by hand.  The weight of those bags, the recycle bags from the ClearStreams and the compost bags will give us a correct weight for the trash produced by concert-goers.  We'll see what happens tomorrow morning.  Here are some pictures from this week's event:

Management team meeting (l-r) - Amanda Turner, Stephanie Hood, Chris Bratta, Cat Wilt and Jillian Gilbert.  Amanda and Stephanie.


The band (I forgot who they were).


We had some special names for the people who were sitting here.  You can have fun inventing names for them too!


The aftermath - one of the new grayish-blue bags of square garbage with recycle cups.  A vinyl banner - one of the few types of plastic our recycler can't accept. We have to count the weight of trash that vendors leave behind with the rest of the trash from the concert-goers.  This is a weekly problem - negotiating with vendors about what they can and can't leave behind.  We actually have no leverage over them.


KKB volunteers help the City of Knoxville crew pick up their garbage cans.  The City is transporting the ClearStreams and blue recycle bins to storage for us and we help them load their stuff.

- posted by KKB Staff at 11:30 PM

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

The weekly Sundown in the City debriefing was held today at the County Engineering conference room.  We made a decision to audit the City garbage compactor truck on Friday morning after this week's Sundown.  We feel this is the only way we are going to get any kind of accurate numbers on how much garbage is coming from Market Square and how much is from other downtown areas (you know that's going to be a lot of fun!)..  The truck typically gets the Market Square garbage can bags plus the waste from the two alleys next to the square.

- posted by KKB Staff at 4:30 PM

Sam Maynard, Terry Faulkner and Tom met at The Steamboat on Central to go over where we are on the 2007 Orchid Awards program.  We brainstormed possible sponsors of awards for the various geographic parts of the County. 

- posted by KKB Staff at 2:30 PM

Thursday, May 17, 2007

After conducting some serious research into the contents and placement of the Market Square trash bags we decided to re-introduce composting at Sundown.  We think we can keep a few more pounds of trash out of the landfill.  The Funnel Cakes vendor won our first prize this week for making everything they sell compostable or recyclable.  Can you see the nice ribbon in the picture below?  Here are the pics of this week's event:



Cat and John talking to Aaron Snukels about something, Mikey, Stephanie and Chris.


People buying wristbands and people recycling.


A vendor brought this min-street sweeper to demo.  In past weeks we've shown you where beer cups come from - this is where beer comes from.


Shots of different recycle bags, crammed with cups and bottles.


Two more bags crammed with recyclables.


This is how you get beer foot.


Another big night for recycling.


One last check of some vendor waste and Sundown dog.

- posted by KKB Staff at 11;55 PM

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

We had the weekly Sundown recycling debriefing meeting today.  The recycling is still around 350 pounds per week but there is still a problem in determining which trash is coming from the square and which is coming from the alley.  As of last week the Square and Alley garbage is being combined.  If we are going to get an accurate picture of what the concert-goers are doing, we need to know the weight of the garbage from the square.  The City workers will work on that this week.  We discussed the waste audit and decided to put out 3 compost bins, one near Tomato Head, and two close to Trio's and the Funnel Cake vendor.  Most of the trash in the audit that could be composted is coming from those areas of the square and we think we can reduce the garbage weight some more.

- posted by KKB Staff at 4:30 PM

Friday, May 11, 2007

It's kind of gross but someone has to do it.  What?  An audit of the trash bags on Market Square after Sundown.  Below are images from our little audit.  We grabbed 3 bags from the square.  One near the stage, and one from each side about halfway down the square.  We did the audit in the parking lot on Jackson Avenue next to the site of the McClung Warehouse fire and down the street from our office.  Many thanks to Jill Gilbert for "holding the bag" - we picked through the garbage and threw it into new bags.  Thanks to Amanda Turner for great documentation and to Stephanie Hood for taking the notes.  The group voted 3 to 1 for Tom Salter to actually go through the bags and touch all the garbage (with gloves of course).  The point of the audit is to gather general information on the types of trash being generated at Sundown and what kind of response we might get if we offer composting containers.  Here are the pics:

We set up a tarp to go through the 3 bags of trash from last night.


Bag one is pretty much what we got from all the bags - paper plates, cups, chip bags, etc.


Bag two had more of the same plus some cardboard.


Digging a little more we get some plastic food boxes and random stuff.


We know where the Fed Ex/Kinko's box came from and we traced these coupons to the WUTK radio display booth. 


Bag three had some interesting stuff.


The required spit cup and a guitar player sticker ripoff of the Major League Baseball logo.


Tom tossing a Coke bottle into the new bag, Jill, Amanda and Stephanie.


We have a list of brand names and know which vendors produced the trash.  Last night we also did observations of each of the vendors and recorded what they were using to serve their food.

- posted by KKB Staff at 10:30 AM

Thursday, May 10, 2007

It was absolutely beautiful for Sundown in the City today.  There was a big crowd, lot's of fun and lot's of recycling.  If you're not recycling at Sundown by now, I just don't know what to think about you - actually I do, but this is a family-friendly website, so I'll keep that to myself.  Here are this week's pics:

Michelle (volunteer), Jill, Amanda (our new intern), Stephanie and Joe (volunteer).


Homa, Cat, Stephanie, Jill, Tom and Stephanie.


Jenni, Katie and Janie, Nathan's hot dogs (really good, I've had a few of them!


Seth and Jon from Christobel and the Jons, Seth, Mischa and Christa.


People.


Our new bins and the funnel cake people.


More people, Stephanie and Amanda doing some quality control.


Amanda loading the recycle trailer and bags of pure recycle material.

- posted by KKB Staff at 11:15 PM

Thursday, May 3, 2007

It is week 4 for Sundown in the City.  Two new things for this week: new recycle bins and signs, plus it poured after we set up the bins and ClearStreams.  I had another commitment that evening and the pictures below are courtesy of John Homa of the City of Knoxville.  The City is a vital partner in this project.  There are some great shots of the cleanup after the concert.

Below: ClearStream and signs used since week one, new bin and signs.


Below: actual concertgoers recycling - they know what to do!


Below: closeup of the new bins - crammed with recycled beer cups.


Below: Concert trash and mulch from planting beds is leaf-blown into rows.


Below: Random trash left by vendors, compactor truck for bagged garbage.

- posted by KKB Staff at 11:55 PM

We had our regular board meeting for May today. We had a quorum and voted on new officers and board members for 2007-2008.  Officers elected are:

     Terry Faulkner - President
     Scott Frith - President-Elect
     Gary Drinnen - External Vice President
     Tobertha Anderson - Internal Vice President
     Anne Felknor - Secretary
     Sam Maynard - Treasurer

Current board members elected to new terms (end of term):

Current board members continuing their terms with no action needed (end of term):

Current board members elected to 1 year terms as special directors:

New board member elected to fill the unexpired term of Darrin Rhines and to serve a new 3 year term:

     Betsey Ford

- posted by KKB Staff at 2:30 PM

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Amanda Turner interviewed with us to be a summer intern.  She is going to be our best intern ever and is willing to work for the experience. She will start Thursday with Sundown recycling.

Tom and Jill met with Jason at Advanced Polymer Recycling to prepare some new barrels for Sundown.  We bought a 4.25 inch hole saw and modified 6 barrels with 4 cup holes each.  We will hold the tops on with nylon ties during the concert and just cut them when we are finished.  We also designed a new sign to slip over some metal frames that Homa uses for recycle bin promotions.

- posted by KKB Staff at 2:30 PM

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

The Sundown in the City committee met for it's weekly debriefing session.  We decided to try some new containers and signage.  Advanced Polymer Recycling will watch for new, clean plastic barrels to modify for beer cup recycling.  AC Entertainment has added some entrance/exit locations and we want to put a recycle container near every trash can.  We have 20 ClearStreams and will add 6 barrels.

KKB's Executive Committee met for lunch today - Harold Byrd, Sarah Surak and Susan Long met with Tom Salter to review the nominating committee report and go over the agenda for this week's regular board meeting. 

- posted by KKB Staff at 6:30 PM