Other Duties as Assigned One Hot Mess Shawna McKinley Director of Sustainability, MeetGreen
We had an event that we were doing with the Unitari- anUniversalistAssociation in Charlotte, actually this past June, and during our site inspections that we do for that event, my role is always to ask all of the questions about their green practices. One thing that we always set out in advance is, we ask
the CVB and the venue to take us on a trip to the recy- cling facility that they use — and the composting facility, if they have one — so that we can go with them to inspect it. The composting program for them was new, but they’d found a partner that looked really promising that was lo- cated probably about a half-hour drive out of the city, in a very rural area of Charlotte. So we all piled into a ve- hicle and we went on a bit of a field trip, first to the recy- cling plant and then to the composting plant. It was definitely one of those trips where it was “make
a right, make a left, around the bend, past the red mail- box, past the horse paddock.” Naturally, we couldn’t find the composting facility. So after unsuccessfully asking around for directions, and finally being able to track down the owner of the compost facility, we got back on the road
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and followed his directions and finally arrived at his plant, which was incredibly remote. And you come up to these places, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a compost- ing facility before — but they don’t smell very nice. When we finally arrived, this particular facility was
an open composting facility, with mountains of compost at various stages of decomposition that are baking there in the sun. And the interesting thing about compost is that, as it sets, even if it’s a cold day in December, as it was this day, everything steams. And it’s really very warm, and the smell just is everywhere. So that was our day. We went out and found out es-
sentially where everything from the disposable service- ware for this event, to the food clippings and vegetable trimmings, and the bones and leftover meat, and the dairy from their kitchens would all be coming to. It was a day where we all learned something new and had a bit of an adventure. And we actually had one of the most suc- cessful waste-management programs that we’ve ever had for this event.