If one person’s trash is another’s treasure, then J.T Marburger has hit the metaphorical jackpot.
Marburger’s company, Circular Solutions, offers software that allows sports venues to track the lifecycle of recyclables — from the moment refuse is dropped into a bin on the concourse, through its journey to the recycling plant and beyond — as these products are remade and given new life.
The numbers speak for themselves.
According to Marburger’s experience, 90% of products going into recycling bins were never actually making it back into the supply chain. Beyond athletics venues, 9% of the general U.S. population still lacks access to a recycling program that accepts aluminum cans, and up to 25% of aluminum beverage cans can be lost during sorting due to insufficient sorting processes. These statistics prompted Marburger’s deeper dive into the state of sustainability at athletics venues.
“I went to all the key sports properties, stadiums and arenas, and I would offer advice on the supply chain and the setup,” Marburger says. “Of the properties that we service — which is around 500 facilities — 90% were not recycling at all prior to Circular Solutions.”
And it all came down to miscommunication. Communication from facility operators to housekeeping to trash haulers was breaking down.
When recyclable materials leave a stadium, they are hauled to a plant that separates waste from reusable items. From there, some items continue to a facility that makes raw materials. This was the process that many stadiums and arenas have been promoting as a part of their commitment to sustainability for many years. The University of Colorado, for example, began its pursuit of “zero waste” at home football games in 2009. However, a more transparent look into the supply chain uncovered disparities between what facilities thought was happening to recycled products and reality.
Says Marburger, “If you’re buying a recycling bin, don’t you want to know that what you’re putting into it is actually being recycled?”
To that end, a focus on communication has allowed facilities to confirm that the supply chain is working as it should, and this new data is changing how sustainability is measured, reported and sold to sponsors. “One of the biggest issues is the plastic liner in the recycling bins. That can’t be processed, and they don’t have a way to open the bag at the plant, so if a venue doesn’t communicate with housekeeping” then those items won’t be recycled, Marburger says.
Marburger was inspired by the recycling and climate-conscious culture he found in many European countries. While he acknowledges that the U.S. has a long way to go in adopting that kind of culture, he believes that by increasing the transparency of the recycling supply chain, he can still have an impact on the sports industry’s sustainability efforts. “It is my small way of making a difference,” he says. “The problem was communication, so I started to fix it.”
As Marburger looks to continue changing the ways stadiums and arenas recycle, he has three guiding principles driving him forward: “Number one, the solution has to have economic balance. Number two, it shouldn’t be political. And number three, improve communication.”
