Portland Trail Blazers @ the Rose Quarter’s Post

Transcript

If every venue in the country switches even just one of their high volume items to a reuse model, we could eliminate over a billion single use items a year. And not only that, but we could create a cultural shift away from this take, making away society and towards a true circular economy. For us, reuse is essential to the success of our sustainability goals. We do about 250 venues around the country. And right now I spend a lot of my time developing specific 250 different waste diversion plans for each one. The big thing is the stakeholder buy in and that has to be the biggest challenge I think that you will face if you are trying to implement a reusable program. I started our world, it's called our Cup at the time back in 2016 because it up to that point I spent 25 years trying to get venues to recycle effectively and after. Failing at it for 25 years, I realized the future had to become reuse because of cross contamination and the fact that the matter of the enemy is single use. So what metrics are indicators are you considering essential to really measure success of your program now and moving forward? Yeah, we, we have a lot of diverse operations. But I think the thing we consistently look for and and I'm always talking to our teams about if they're either depending on where they're at and they're used journey I'll say is. Recovery rate and guest experience. And I guess the other thing that I think helps a lot is feeling like every single player in the venue is on the same page, right? I think that alignment is really key so that everyone's kind of singing the same tune, everyone's putting forth that same kind of extra effort to make sure that these programs are super successful. I think one of the things that was so exciting about our program at Moda Center is how seamlessly we were able to deploy the program and in the process enhance our. Fan experience in the arena. Yeah. When we're talking with venues that we work with, you know, our key take away are our 1:00 ask is just try it. Just that pilot mentality. So start small if you need to to introduce it. And then you experience that success and then build. I totally echo that. Just do it. Yeah, it's not rocket science. It's easy to execute. And most importantly, your guests love it. So I'm grateful to be here today to present the reuse. Playbook and everyone on stage who's been part of this and making this happen. Like all science textbooks, books get written every year and this is the start of a book that will change the game for this in the in the sports industry since we started 12 years ago.