Zero Waste Valet
Published August 5th, 2024
The next time you’re in concourse B at Denver International Airport (DEN, as folks in the biz call it), take a moment to look for a Scraps associate — and say hi if you see us!
That’s right: Scraps is now at DEN, helping the world’s second largest airport by total area (54 square miles!) achieve its goal of becoming the world’s most sustainable airport.
DEN aims to move the needle on this goal by piloting a first-of-its-kind Zero Waste Valet (ZWV) project, to increase waste diversion and decrease contamination in its concessions (food and beverage) program on the B concourse, the largest of DEN’s three concourses. And Scraps is proud to be DEN’s on-the-ground partner in this endeavor!
The undertaking feels as large as DEN itself: According to airport data, concourse B produces 350 tons of waste per month, diverting only about 27% of this waste stream to be recycled and composted instead of landfilled. What’s more, concourse B’s recycling stream has a 50% contamination rate, meaning that much, if not all, of this material is also at high risk of ending up in the landfill.
Fortunately where there are complicated trash problems, DEN and Scraps see sustainable solutions! Digging deeper into the details, 30% of DEN’s overall trash stream is actually recyclable, while another 30% is compostable, opening up the potential to divert up to 60% more material currently going to the landfill from concourse B. Making the situation even better is the fact that half of all recyclables and around 80% of all compostables are generated by airport concessions – hence the laser focus on this concourse, with these key partners & participants.
As of writing, our Scraps ZWV team has been on the ground for over a month, carefully putting the building blocks of this groundbreaking program in place while onboarding, training and servicing our first group of concessions. Once fully implemented, our specialized squad will be working with all 37 incredible food and beverage concessions on the B concourse, including Snooze, Shake Shack, Aviator’s, Cantina Grill, Salt & Grinder, and the irresistible-but-why-resist Voodoo Doughnuts!
In just a few weeks of work, our phenomenal team has collected more than 7,000 lbs of compostables and more than 5,000 lbs of recyclables from our inspiring partner concessions — nearly 6 tons!
As the Zero Waste Valet program expands across the entire B concourse over the next several months, we anticipate scaling up to the point where our team is helping to keep more than 60 additional tons of waste out of the landfill each month.
And seriously, we’re just getting started. We can’t wait to share more; stay tuned for more updates as this program unfolds!
