Students Run an Extremely Successful Waste Diversion Campaign At Two of Green Living Magazines Largest Events of the Year

​Green Living Magazine is a lifestyle magazine focused on promoting the best ways to be eco-conscious in all areas of life. Due to this, Green Living Magazine aims to be as sustainable as possible in every aspect of their business. With the plan to host two separate events during Earth Day weekend, Green Living Magazine of course wanted to make these events were as sustainable as possible by implementing green event practices. They reached out to Greenlight Solutions for advice, recommendations, and support for hosting their green events as they sought to improve their waste diversion practices, recruit green-minded volunteers, and market their events to a wider demographic. Throughout the 2022 spring semester, our student team and project partners worked towards our vision of two low-waste and sustainability focused earth week events. 

​Our project team’s biggest objective for the earth week events was to divert as much waste as possible from the landfills. From there we set our goal to achieve 60% of total waste accumulated at the event to be diverted from the landfill. We started out by researching best practices for waste diversion, as well as researching local organizations and facilities that could help with recycling and composting. The next step was determining waste hauler needs and planning accordingly. For the Future of Sustainability event on April 22nd, our Green Living Magazine project team ended up diverting 85% of the event’s total waste from being placed into the landfill, which greatly exceeded our team’s expectations. This included 12.4 lbs of recycling, 21.4 lbs of compost, and 67.4lbs of excess food donated to a local group. The total waste diversion from the Earth Day Extravaganza event on April 23rd also ended up exceeding our team’s original 60% goal, with 77% of the event waste diverted from the landfill. With 74% of the diverted waste being composted food, and 26% being recycling. 

The Green Living Magazine project team also recruited volunteers from the community to help with the events. The main volunteer position was the bin guards, who were needed to stand by the waste stations throughout the events to ensure that nothing got thrown in the wrong bin. In addition, they helped to sort through the recycling, compost, and landfill waste after the events were finished so that we could verify that everything was sent to the correct facility and no bins were contaminated. The bin guards also make sure to weigh all waste from both events. Our project team recruited volunteers by promoting the volunteer opportunities throughout multiple social media channels and ASU club/organization networks. We met our set goal of volunteers for each event. Our team of students also helped Green Living Magazine with marketing their Earth Day Extravaganza event. Each team member advertised the event on at least 5 virtual platforms, and posted physical event flyers inside 4 local businesses. Thanks to the work of both our brilliant project partner and diligent project team the events had an extremely successful turnout.

The students who worked in the Spring 2022 Green Living Magazine Project Team were Jenna Bryant, Rachel Antidormi, Harsh Ranparia, Ellie Lagergren, and Raven Fielding. As a team we gained useful skills in project management, sustainable event planning, and waste management, and we all learned a lot through the process.

​ Written By: Jenna Bryant | Rachel Antidormi | Harsh Ranparia | Ellie Lagergren | Raven Fielding