Gaming and entertainment company Caesars Entertainment Corporation, which boasts more than 49 casino and resort properties, operates some of the most iconic brands in the hospitality industry, including Harrah’s, Horseshoe and of course, Caesars Palace.
Caesars’ affiliated casino and resorts offer an incredibly diverse lineup of attractions, from gambling to nightlife and dining in hundreds of restaurants and nightclubs. Those attractions—most notably dining—generate waste every day. It’s Jeff Ruskowitz’ job to manage its disposal. Ruskowitz is manager of engineering and sustainable operations at Caesars, and as such, he’s responsible for the company’s well-stated commitment to divert 50 percent of its total waste by 2020.
Establishing a Baseline 91˛Öżâ Diversion Metric
The company’s 2020 goal was established in 2008 as part of Caesars’ CodeGreen initiative, an organization-wide, multi-year strategy to identify, monitor, measure, assess, manage and reduce the company’s material impacts on the environment. Ruskowitz inherited CodeGreen goals, of which the 2020 waste diversion commitment was one, when he joined Caesars in 2013. Upon his arrival some five years into the 12-year project, he found that the company had not been actively measuring its organizational diversion level. “While we were clearly committed to CodeGreen through ongoing education and waste diversion infrastructure, execution was happening in site-specific silos,” he says. “There was no centralized, aggregate reporting effort, so we were unable to make an accurate assessment of our progress. In addition to this decentralization, we realized that not everything being diverted, particularly organics, was being reported.”
To establish a baseline, Ruskowitz made a concerted effort in 2013 to implement organization-wide monthly reporting criteria based on the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) 91˛ÖżâWise guidelines. For the duration of that year, facilities reported their waste prevention, recycling, composting and buying/manufacturing of recycled-content products directly to Ruskowitz. “Using that data, we were able to accurately measure our actual tonnage diversion and ascertained that we had achieved 23 percent diversion heading into 2014,” says Ruskowitz.
Though the baseline had been established and progress determined, Ruskowitz faced another challenge. To move the needle closer to the 2020 goal, Caesars needed to identify additional divertible waste, which was literally hidden in the trash.
Dumpster Diving For Data
In 2014, Caesars discovered the path to the waste stream visibility it needed to further its 2020 diversion goal. That year, it contracted utility bill processing and analysis services from Ecova, which offered another intriguing service: waste consulting. “When we started working with Ecova for utility bill processing we made sure that waste audits were included,” says Ruskowitz.
A waste audit is exactly what it sounds like—an organized physical inspection and recording of everything making its way into a facility’s trash compactors. 91˛Öżâ audits are an element of Ecova’s total waste solution offering, which also includes vendor contract management and comprehensive waste reduction planning. 91˛Öżâ auditors identify and categorize any waste material that could have been diverted from a landfill and disposed of in a more sustainable, economical way. Those materials typically include recyclables, assets and, importantly at Caesars, food waste. “We knew that to gain insight into why we weren’t diverting more, we had to see the unseen—the volume of divertible material going into our compactors,” says Ruskowitz. “Many of our facilities feature multiple restaurants, so we had a strong suspicion that food waste diversion would be a significant opportunity.”
In determining which sites to audit, Ruskowitz and the team at Ecova chose two distinctly different properties representative of Caesars’ diverse site portfolio to create a snapshot of the waste disposal trends it could anticipate across the enterprise. The first audit was conducted at the Horseshoe Casino Hammond, a casino property in Hammond, IN, and the second at Rio Las Vegas, a large-scale resort property in Las Vegas. “We wanted to determine and classify the waste generated by our casino properties and contrast those findings with the waste coming out of our resort properties, which have guest rooms, casinos, entertainment venues and multiple restaurants of varying types,” says Ruskowitz.
Ecova took the lead on planning and execution of the audits, which required coordination with haulers at both sites to reserve large, safe spaces at their respective transfer stations, where the sorting and recording processes would occur. When the time came to don gloves and hard hats and pick through the trash, Ruskowitz and his team were on-hand and knee-deep in the activity. “It was an eye-opening experience to see what was in there,” he says. “While Caesars already had an established recycling program, the audit exercises revealed just how great an opportunity we had on the path to meeting and exceeding our waste goal.”
Food Diversion Leads the Effort
In all, auditors pored through nearly nine tons of waste at the two properties and, as suspected, measured considerable differences in the volume of divertible waste at each. Food waste presented the greatest opportunity, by far, for increased diversion at Rio, where it accounted for 55 percent of compactor material by volume and 80 percent by weight. At Horseshoe Hammond, on the other hand, while food was the leading divertible waste by weight, true recyclables like glass, plastic, paper, cardboard and metal comprised nearly 60 percent of divertible material by volume.
“The volume and weight of our food and food packaging waste was surprising, so it became a priority to address those,” says Ruskowitz. Caesars has relationships with composting facilities, food banks and pantries, farms and bioenergy facilities at many of their properties, but is always seeking additional food diversion solutions. On the supply side, Caesars is working to drive reductions in prepared food packaging as well. Caesars partners with Ecova to identify and procure diversion partners, and Ruskowitz says the audits didn’t uncover any single divertible material that the partners couldn’t find a diversion solution to accommodate. “Diversion opportunities are very location specific, and with properties all over the country, we anticipate that we’ll run into situations where certain composting or recycling opportunities might not be available,” he says, adding that Ecova’s network and knowledge alleviate the burden on him. “I communicate with my project lead at Ecova at least once per week, and when I need a vendor for diversion of a certain material at a certain property, Ecova takes the lead on finding it.”
While food waste presents Caesars with the biggest diversion opportunity, the audit uncovered plenty of low-hanging fruit in the form of waste that’s easily recycled—or altogether mitigated. “The amount of glass and aluminum in our compactors was surprising, and that’s material that can easily be recycled,” says Ruskowitz. One of the next big challenges is engaging guests in the process. “We found a lot of silverware and intact barware in compactors from both locations,” explains Ruskowitz, which indicates that in some cases guests are throwing Caesars’ assets in the trash. “From what we’ve learned, we see an opportunity for increased education and outreach to guests and staff alike.”
Ongoing Education Builds Diversion Momentum
As a result of its initial waste audits, Caesars has doubled down on its centralized outreach and education efforts. Upon receipt of detailed waste audit reports from Ecova, Ruskowitz shares what he’s learned with property-specific CodeGreen teams comprised of a team leader and representatives from each key department, including housekeeping, food and beverage, and facilities. “Their ability to see a visual representation of what’s going into our trash compactors goes a long way toward their understanding of where we can improve,” says Ruskowitz.
Ruskowitz says proving the value of waste diversion to corporate stakeholders, on the other hand, isn’t hard at all. “From the facilities department to our senior leaders, many recognize that waste diversion is good for our business. The more we quantify, the more confidence we instill in our stakeholders. And the more we divert, the more we reduce our compactor hauls, which reduces our operating costs in a quantifiable way,” he says.
Moving forward, more waste audits are being planned to further refine the site-specific diversion efforts at Caesars. Its initial choice of two distinctly different audit sites provided a snapshot of its diversion opportunities that could be applied at other locations in the Caesars portfolio, but Ruskowitz knows that waste streams can vary greatly depending on the type of site and the local recycling programs available. “We’ll continue to audit and continue pushing diversion, especially of organics, as much as possible,” he says. “The more we divert, the more money we save and the bigger environmental impact we make.”
At Caesars Entertainment, the waste audit experience has contributed to its current standing at 44 percent diversion, with a full five years ahead to reach—and likely surpass—its 2020 goal.
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