Waste Management Strategies for Pickleball Tournaments

The goal? Divert tournament waste from landfills and make pickleball the leaders of sustainability in sport.

Despite pickleball’s growth, it is still a fresh, new sport to most of us. Pickleball has that chance of becoming the leader of sustainability in sport.

An example is Wimbledon. Wimbledon has been a great leader in the tennis community, by creating a waste collection system for its championships. The tournament has been a model for sustainability by separating recyclables and food waste from the trash at its championships to divert as much of it as possible from the landfill. No waste goes to the landfill from the Championships at Wimbledon.ii

Did you know 50 to 100 tons of waste are produced at an average football game with 100,000 visitors? At Wimbledon, 42,000 spectators are in the Grounds at any one time, yet Wimbledon has been able to divert about 95% of its waste.

What does this have to do with pickleball? Not only does the average pickleball game have less visitors and players combined, it is a much newer sport and has the chance to take similar measures as Wimbledon in achieving waste diversion. As pickleball grows, this may become more challenging. Which is why this is the time to start.

Why is this important? According to the EPA, sporting event attendees generate around 39 million pounds of trash per year generally. This waste is generated from food, water bottles, sports equipment, and more. Imagine how many pickleballs go to waste in one tournament? How much food waste and how many water bottles go to waste at a tournament? While pickleballs cannot be recycled (at the moment), the goal with this guide is to help tournament organizations at least divert 50% of the waste

produced at tournaments per year from the landfill. The goal of this guide is to empower tournaments with information with waste management infrastructure.

So What Can Be Done?

There are several measures that can be taken: have a waste management system; reduce plastic waste; and calculate the estimate percentage of waste diverted from landfills per year per tournament organization/series.

Even if only 50% of waste can be diverted from the landfill at pickleball tournaments per year, that would be a great start.

Did you know some states like California have already passed laws like SB 1383, California’s Short-Lived Climate Pollutant’s bill, requiring organics like food scraps and soiled paper and cardboard to be placed into an organics bin? This allows facilities managing this waste to place the organics material into an anaerobic digestion process that creates biofuel, electricity, and soil. 20% of California’s methane comes from organic waste in landfills.vii Imagine if 20% of that waste can be diverted by being composted or put into an organics bin to take to an organics facility instead of the landfill?

Imagine if pickleball tournaments also contributed to this diversion of organic AND recycle waste?

Pickleball can be a leader for sustainable sports.

So here are options pickleball tournaments may take:

1) Have a Recycling and Organics Bin/Container

What is it? This would consist of at least two Recycling Bins/Containers and two Organics Bins/Containers in the tournament venue. All food waste and soiled paper products would go into the organics bin/container, while recyclables like non-soiled paper would go into the recycle bin/container.

However, since organics is a fairly new concept that is slowly being implemented in jurisdictions across the U.S., it is understandable if it is not the most accessible one. There are not that many facilities that process organics, so it is possible some tournament locations will not have access to a hauler willing to take organics.

If this is the case, just a recycling bin would be the most probable option. This would at least allow non-soiled paper products to be diverted from the landfill.

How can it be done? This can be done by speaking with venues and/or the City or Private Waste Hauler company to set up a waste management system per location. Tournaments can make a contract with the venue to set up a waste management service for organics and recyclables during tournaments, or, speak with the venue and see if tournaments can temporarily set up waste management services through the Public Works department of that jurisdiction or a Private Waste Management service in the area.

It would also help to create reusable flyers or online flyer about placing items in the proper bin: Having information during tournaments about this would be helpful to help direct those in managing their waste and placing their items in the proper bin/container. For your information, the following would generally go into the following bin/containers:

Recycling:

· Plastics: bottle caps; plastic #1, 2, 5; soda, juice and water bottles.

· Metals: Aluminum foil and tins; scrap metal; steel cans.

· Paper (clean and dry): magazines; flyers; regular paper; paper bags; cartons.

· Cardboard: clean section of pizza box

· Glass: bottles and food jars

Organics:

· Food scraps

· Food soiled paper: greasy part of pizza box; compostable to-go boxes; paper napkins.

Trash: Everything else, except hazardous waste.

Hazardous Waste: Batteries, lights, etc. There should be facilities nearby that take these.

2) Ask Vendors to Reduce Their Waste and use Compostable or Reusable Items

Water filling stations - Encouraging the use of reusable water bottles, with refill stations.

Encourage Vendors to not give away plastic bags - encourage them to give out cotton canvas bags or paper bags instead.

Only sustainable give away items - Pickleballs, wristbands, electrolyte packs are all examples of good giveaway items. However, steer clear from giving out flyers, other plastic items, etc.

Encourage Food Vendors to Use Compostable or Reusable Utensils - 50% of the plastic we use is single-use, or used once before it is thrown away, like a plastic bottle. Once we throw it away, it doesn’t just disappear. It can take up to a thousand (1,000) years just to decompose.viii While it does decompose, it creates greenhouse gases that pollute the air. Food vendors can use compostable or reusable utensils for events, to avoid plastic entering the landfill stream.

Encourage use of paper-backed tape for taping courts

Reuse Signs and Use QR Codes - Venues have already been using QR codes for brackets. Large signs can be reused and QR codes can be used for all information.

What The Public Says

According to a small sample survey I created asking players, “In your experience, where does most of the waste (trash, organics, recycling, etc.) come from at tournaments?” the most common answers were “food wrappers.” Another common one was single use plastics and leftover food.ix

I believe most of this can be tackled, even if pickleballs are not recyclable.