Big crowds mean big trash. And as South Florida gears up to host seven World Cup matches starting mid-June, local groups are gearing up to address the sheer amount of trash generated by the games and related festivities.
The concerns are not new. Every time the Super Bowl comes to town, environmental groups work with venues to limit or recycle as much waste as they possibly can.
But this time, as crowds get ready for events to kick off, Miami-Dade County is dealing with a trash crisis, in which the county is spending tens of millions of dollars shipping garbage to other parts of the state. The situation has changed dramatically ever since the county's waste-to-energy incinerator burned to the ground in 2023. The county is still trying to figure out solutions to the mounting problem.
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" On one hand, the timing of it all is not ideal 'cause we're having this huge event while we're dealing with all these problems," Maddie Kaufman, the zero-waste institutional change director at Debris Free Oceans, a Miami-based nonprofit, told WLRN.
"But I feel like people react and find solutions in times of crisis, and so I really see this as kind of a silver lining where we can really implement solutions."
The group's campaign to raise awareness about waste during the World Cup is called Kick the Cup.
“It is a new concept. We’ve gotta start just raising awareness on it and then get into implementing it."
The sheer amount of trash that's likely to be generated by the World Cup is staggering. The 2020 Super Bowl in Miami Gardens generated about 80,000 pounds of trash. Each of the seven World Cup games could be the equivalent of its own Super Bowl, said Kaufman. That would add up to over half a million pounds of trash.
Then there's all the side parties and watch events.
Normally, groups like Debris Free Oceans would work directly with venues like Hard Rock Stadium to implement policies on reducing waste for major events, but since tournament organizing body FIFA controls everything during the World Cup — down to renaming the stadiums where games are played — it has made it "challenging" to work on the World Cup itself, said Kaufman.
The group has instead turned its attention to Fan Fest, a publicly funded watch party event taking place at Bayfront Park in downtown Miami. The event expects to draw at least 30,000 visitors per day for the duration of the entire tournament, from June 13 to July 5.
" I'm very eager to see what we're able to achieve at Fan Fest," said Kaufman, noting that conversations are ongoing.
Debris Free Oceans is focused primarily on transitioning venues like the Kaseya Center, the BB&T Center and Hard Rock Stadium into reusable materials, and away from merely thinking about recycling. The group already works with the World Jai-Alai League at the newly renovated JAM Arena, offering reusable cups to game attendees.
But other cities have seen success at a different scale, something Kaufman wants to emulate. In Seattle, a third-party company is working with sports venues to wash and reuse aluminium cups, preventing waste from heading to a landfill.
"We also love recycling, we also love composting, but our composting capacity is very limited. Our recycling can be very limited. And reuse is, according to several life-cycle analyses, the best way to address our waste crisis," she said.
Even though the group focuses on marine waste, there is no way to address what happens in the water without first addressing what takes place on land. About 80% of marine debris originally comes from land-based sources, according to the United Nations.
Beach and mangrove cleanups are important, Kaufman stressed, but by the time someone cleans a beach, many things have gone wrong before the trash reached the water.
Events like Fan Fest are "like mini cities" that can help reshape society's understanding of what is possible, she said.
A positive example she has seen is Ultra Music Festival, which also takes place at Bayfront Park. Food vendors at the event are plastic-free. Aside from free water bottles given to attendees — refills are allowed — the drinks are also plastic free.
For the nonprofit, the most important mark of success for the Kick the Cup campaign is just to keep the conversation going about reducing waste, especially through the concept of reuse.
"It is a new concept. We've gotta start just raising awareness on it and then get into implementing it," she said.
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