A local business is trailing right behind the Seahawks on the road to Phoenix to take care of the dirty details that most folks don’t think about when it comes to the big game.
Bainbridge-based Green Mountain Technologies (GMT) has been contracted by the city of Phoenix to assist in making sure 30 to 50 tons of food waste and compostables make it to the right containers at pre-Super Bowl parties.
“Seattle has been setting the standard for food waste composting at events such as the Mariners and Seahawks games. The city of Phoenix is interested in emulating Seattle’s event composting success,” said Green Mountain Technologies CEO Michael Bryan-Brown. “By promoting composting for these Super Bowl festivities, the city of Phoenix is setting the standard for all Super Bowls to come.”
Phoenix will host about 100,000 visitors for the Super Bowl alone. A new 12-block fan campus is expected to draw nearly one million fans, according to the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee.
Long before GMT employees knew the Hawks were going to the Super Bowl, they were working with the city of Phoenix to help design a municipal compost system similar to ones the company has designed in other cities. Employees were then invited to test a pilot program during Super Bowl weekend to show just how a future compostable and waste program would work, said Van Calvez, GMT compost systems engineer.
“It just happened to turn out that the Seahawks got to go to the Superbowl,” said Calvez. “We were heading to Phoenix in advance of this.”
An expected 250,000 people will attend some of the pre-Super Bowl events where Green Mountain Technologies will supervise and assist in compost collection before toting it off to a composting facility nearby.
The pilot program is part of the larger conceptualization of bringing Seattle-style curbside collection of food and yard waste to Phoenix. By spring of 2016, GMT employees hope to have an operating state-of-the-art composting facility for processing all of Phoneix’s food and yard waste.
That includes a whole lot of food scraps, serving ware and food-grade paper.
“We’re bringing that same Seahawks determination to help the city of Phoenix establish a top-notch composting program,” said Bryan-Brown. “I’m totally excited now to be a part of this event to support the Seahawks and proving that (composting) is easy to do.”
Ultimately, the overall goal is to make the festivities zero-waste events, where everything is either composted or recycled, according to GMT.
Since 1992, the company has worked with organizations to reduce their environmental footprint, save money and produce high-quality compost.
“One of the main motivations to do it is to use a high-profile event like the Super Bowl to start educating the citizens of Phoenix that composting is viable and is almost like a kick-off for their long-term curbside program,” Bryan-Brown said. For more information on GMT, visit www.compostingtechnology.com.
