Meat and greens

There are only two Labor Day weekend events for many Northern Nevadans: The Burning Man Festival and the Annual Best in the West Nugget Rib Cook-Off. While the Burning Man’s core value of “leave no trace” is well known, events like the rib cook-off can often get a bad rap, simply because of the mindboggling amounts of consumption of food, drinks and packaging.

Lauren Garber, the Nugget’s public relations manager, said the cook-off’s recycling program goes back to 2011, when the company made changes to the operation and layout of the festival to more easily allow for cleanup and separation of throwaways by placing recycling containers in high-traffic areas. The Rib Village, too, got a makeover with all plates, cups, utensils and food being compostable. These efforts have diverted some 82,140 pounds of waste from landfills since the program started.

So what’s that look like? From Aug. 29 through Sept. 6 of last year, that was 1,080 cubic yards of cardboard at 48,780 pounds. The glass recycled weighed in at 1,400 pounds. Compost during the same period yielded 21,960 pounds. Steve Duque, operations manager for Castaway Trash Hauling, which handles the Nugget’s recycling, said the compost number included some 80 cubic yards of meat products.

And it’s not just the rib festival, the Nugget has a year-round green program. In 2012, the hotel and casino diverted more than 447,900 pounds of food and recyclables from landfills through composting and recycling. In fiscal year 2012, excluding the rib festival, that broke down to 104,000 pounds of cardboard and paper, 262,107 pounds of food compost, 59,872 pounds of glass, 10,920 pounds of plastic, and 11,060 pounds of metals.

“We make a conscious effort here at the Nugget to consistently recycle and compost everything we can,” said Garber. “There are bins all over, even on our management floor and in our executive offices. We just make a conscious effort to compost and recycle wherever we can. That even includes our employee cafeteria. And when it’s all said and done, Castaway takes it away to their facility, and then eventually we get some of that compost back, and it goes into our planting beds around the Nugget.”

It seems logical that the casino would make some cash back from all that good citizenship, but that’s not the way it works. Not yet, anyway.

“The way it works right now, we don’t make any money back on it,” Garber said. “We could make some money back on it in the future, but right now we do it because it’s the right thing to do. Throwing away all that extra food, throwing away glass and plastic, it’s just not a good practice for the environment. So even though we lose a little money financially by composting and recycling, it’s best in the long run for our community.”

This year, the Best in the West Nugget Rib Cook-Off, which is in its 25th year, will run Wednesday, Aug. 28 through Monday, Sept. 2, 2013. It’ll feature 24 rib cookers from around the world and attract a half-million people.