881 pounds of waste from Jazzoo was able to be composted!

Did you know our biggest night of the year, Jazzoo, aims to be a zero-waste event? This means none of your discarded dinner plates or half-finished cocktails will end up in the landfill after an evening of being serenaded. With Jazzoo seeing nearly 2,000 guests walk through the door, it is by far one of our most environmentally impactful events, so we decided to ensure this event would become sustainable.  

“It’s the only big, open ticket event that the Zoo throws, which is accompanied by a massive amount of waste,” said Conservation Coordinator Alyssa Rice. “This type of event is where ‘green’ efforts can really be applied.” 

All of the dishware offered to guests on this night, from the napkins to utensils to plates, are fully compostable. The choice to compost rather than solely focus on recycling is critical in order to be as zero-waste as possible.  

When it comes to recycling, items that have been in contact with food are considered contaminated and are not accepted into recycling facilities unless they’re cleaned first. This is true for your recycling bin at home, too, so make sure you avoid your items unwittingly heading into the landfill by double-checking recycling standards and giving your plastics a rinse!  

Since food waste is already compostable, we can take these “contaminated” items and compost the whole thing. Composting allows for everything from pizza-sauce-splattered plates to half-finished sugar-rimmed adult beverages to be composted and turned into rich soil. Any untouched food is donated to people in need in our county.  

While we do have a composting process on our property for animal manure, we bring all our trash from this event to a commercial-level compost facility in St. Augustine due to the sheer volume of items from this one-day affair. To be specific, this one event produced about 2,257 pounds of total waste. If this was not composted, it would head straight for the landfill, so we are proud to mitigate this waste.  

The day after Jazzoo, Alyssa sorts and weighs the waste with a small team of Zoo Teens and other community members to ensure non-compostable items didn’t sneak into our compost bags during the event, like aluminum foil or glass bottles brought in from an outside source. This can be a very dirty job, (think knee-deep in discarded burger buns and unfinished pudding samplers) so we are incredibly grateful for their hard work.  

Measuring out the compost is also an important part of this sorting process. In order for an event to be considered completely zero-waste, only 10% of the waste can be landfill-bound. This percentage is determined by weight. This year, our team calculated 881 pounds of compost, 443 pounds of recycling and 753 pounds of trash and 180 pounds of donated food. That means that 1,504, or 67%, of our waste was diverted from the landfill. To be considered truly zero-waste, this number needs to be at least 90%. We hope as we continue to learn more about our own waste production during this event that we can eventually hit that percentage.  

Once the compost is prepped for transport, Alyssa and a teammate make the two-hour drive to Indianhead Soil in St. Augustine who work with us to meet all our composting needs for this event.  

Once there, the waste will continue on in the composting lifecycle. It will be added to large windrows, or long rows, where it will spend the next few months breaking down in the high heat produced during the bio-degrading process.   

After getting the rundown on the dirty work behind-the-scenes of this event, you may have come to the conclusion that being sustainable on a large scale isn’t easy! While this sentiment can be true, the desire to expand our sustainable efforts to other events is there. 

“At the Zoo, we want animals to thrive both within and outside of our walls.” said Alyssa. “Caring for wildlife means caring for their habitats, and if we can reduce the negative impacts of our operations, even by just one event at a time, we’ll do it.”  

Special thanks to Flammio Financial Group, Stifel-Garvin Wealth Management Group, Artemis IT, and Jim and Darleen Barfield. Their generosity makes our work possible! 

Brevard Zoo is an independent, not-for-profit organization that receives no recurring government funding for our operating costs. Your generous support enables us to continue to serve our community and continue our vital animal wellness, education and conservation programs.