Why Are We Throwing It All Away?

(March 8, 2003- Indian Wells, CA) First of all, let me say that I think the Tennis Gardens at Indian Wells is a great facility. There are stadium, outside and practice courts that seem to suit the players as well as spectators. Depending upon whether temperatures reach three digits, if you are lucky enough, want to spend big bucks, or are being catered to by corporate V.I.P.s, matches are probably better viewed from the inside boxes where one is at least protected from the merciless Coachella Valley sun; but hey, that’s another story.

Efforts seem to have been made to apply good environmental landscaping practices, including the use of ‘bubbler’ sprinklers. These little gems of modern science water the plants rather than the walkways… as I said, good planning.

Some forward thinking has been applied with food vendors, the City of Indian Wells and waste purveyors to establish bins for the use of recycling. These brightly colored receptacles proudly proclaim, “working together for a better environment.”

In a perfect world, this would be great. I watched and observed as people finished their food and looked for a proper way to dispose of the waste. Some actually read the signs and deposited their droppings in the proper containers. Sadly, for the most part, people just dumped the stuff in whatever bin wasn’t full. There were no instructions or educational material provided to encourage the eaters to dispose wisely.

I might have found this to be moderately acceptable if I hadn’t ventured in to the media/player eating area again this year. While food prepared is first class, I have been waiting for the past three years, to have those in charge of arena exhibit example-setting waste and recycling practices. Sadly, this year is the worst yet.

All food is served on really good-looking plastic plates: good enough, in fact, to be reused at a Lincoln Club breakfast! There are approximately one thousand people a day who pass through this food emporium. Some may be repeats, I was told by an employee; but that doesn’t alter the fact that separate plates are used for each serving.

Let’s say that people use one to three plates per serving. That’s 1,000 to 3,000 plates per day times the fourteen days of the tournament. You do the math and that doesn’t include the beverage holders. I watched the workers cart off bag after bag of… garbage.

The problem is, there were many recyclables and redeemables in these bags. Once food scraps are co-mingled with water bottles and aluminum cans, they are rendered unredeemable. The fact that nobody at the tennis tournament was source-separating these items means they were going to the dump when they could, at the very least, be recycled.

Even more of a crime is, the redeemables can bring in serious cash. Any social club, scout troop, or city other than Indian Wells could reclaim a substantial amount of dollars and recycle the proceeds to good use.

While the City Council of Indian Wells has seen fit to invest $600,000 of somebody’s money to be the title sponsor of the Pacific Life tournament, I wonder how much of their largess could have been offset by a simple social practice many of us have become accustomed to… it’s called recycling! By the way, did I mention that the tennis was great?

Writing Solutions