The New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Completes Waste Audit

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The New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Completes Waste Audit

10/11/2024
NEW ORLEANS – The New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center (NOENMCC) regularly hosts conferences, tradeshows, conventions and glamorous high-profile events such as charity galas and Carnival balls. But recently they have been talking trash. On October 8, the Convention Center completed its second major waste audit.

During the WEFTEC water quality event, Convention Center employees, event staff and special guests (dubbed the “Trash Team”) rooted through over 3,674 pounds of a representative sample of waste materials. The goal of the exercise was to evaluate how well the building is diverting event materials from landfills. The contents of trash, recycling and composting bins were collected over a 24-hour period and then sorted by hand into groups (e.g. metals, plastics, compostables, landfill waste, etc.) to determine the extent to which materials were placed in their proper collection bins.

“Sorting through event recycling and waste was an eye-opening experience,” said Convention Center Chief Operating Officer Adam J. Straight, who was part of the Trash Team. “It’s one thing to have a basic idea of where things go after we throw them away, but this kind of hands-on exercise gives us a more granular understanding of how and why getting things in the right bins is so critical. Leveling up our waste diversion efforts — not just for events but also for facility management and construction projects — is an important part of the Convention Center’s mission to reduce our environmental impact.”

The waste audit gave Convention Center Director of Sustainability Linda Baynham and her team an opportunity to experiment with a new recycling assistant app. As part of the Rubbish AI pilot program, NOENMCC staff can quickly document what items are left in landfill containers and on the show floor. The Rubbish app uses AI photo recognition combined with a software that delivers a report to the user.

Organized by Baynham, the waste audit’s goal was to provide a detailed account of each waste stream and analysis about potential opportunities for improving the building’s overall diversion rate. The end result is a waste audit report that describes how well an organization is managing its waste and ways to improve.

The initial report from the October 8th audit revealed that 73.3% of the waste evaluated was properly diverted from the landfill, according to Brian Bollinger of Sustainable Investment Group, the Convention Center’s LEED consultant.

This waste audit supports the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) gold certification the NOENMCC received from the US Green Building Council in 2022 and will factor into its 2025 LEED recertification application.

“When we earned our LEED Gold certification, our facility became the largest LEED-certified project in Louisiana and one of the largest in the world,” said Convention Center President and CEO Michael J. Sawaya. “As a leader in sustainability, the Convention Center aims to be an example of what’s possible. This waste audit shows other businesses in our region that making recycling a priority can significantly reduce environmental impacts.”

WEFTEC, the Water Environment Federation's Technical Exhibition and Conference, earned the Events Industry Council (EIC) Sustainable Event Standards gold certification in 2023. The EIC certification assesses events on eight sustainability standards focused on environmental and social responsibility.

“The New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center is the ideal partner to continue WEF’s sustainable event efforts,” said Stephanie Jones, WEF Managing Director of Event Strategy. “We were pleased that WEFTEC could participate in the waste audit.”

The purpose of a waste audit is to understand the make-up of waste in a facility (i.e. recyclable material, true trash waste, compostable/organic materials, etc.) and to observe and analyze how accurately waste is discarded (both front of house and back of house) and to identify items that are incorrectly being discarded in the wrong collection container. For example, garbage might get into the recycling stream or recyclables could end up in the landfill waste stream.

Using samples of waste collected from a facility over a 24-hour period, a waste audit analyzes what can be better “diverted” from the waste stream. Diversion means keeping waste out of the landfill and into making useful products. This includes what can be recycled, composted, sold – like cardboard and pallets – or reduced in the first place.

About the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center (NOENMCC)
New Orleans is Built to Host! With 1.1 million square feet of prime exhibit space on one level, all under one roof, NOENMCC is the sixth largest Convention Center in the United States and provides the largest single exhibit space in the country. NOENMCC is a 2023 IAVM Venue Excellence recipient and is consistently named a regional top workplace by The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. Our recent LEED Gold certification makes NOENMCC the largest LEED-certified project in Louisiana and the largest convention center project in the U.S. certified under LEED v4.1 Operations and Maintenance, as well as the first convention center in the world to be awarded initial certification under LEED Gold v4.1 O+M. A leading contributor to the city’s robust tourism economy, NOENMCC event activity has produced $90.1 billion in economic impact since its 1985 opening. www.mccno.com

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