Mya Manibusan
Low-waste events are not a future concept. They are running right now, in real venues, with real return rates to prove it.
That was the premise behind "The Future of Low-Waste Events," a panel and networking event Bold Reuse hosted with Bridge 13 to kick off PNW Climate Week. We brought together operators who are already doing the work: Conners McMenamin, VP and Co-Owner at McMenamin's Pubs and Breweries, and Executive Chef Wade Eybel of the Hyatt Regency at the Oregon Convention Center. The goal was simple: get people in the room who run venues and events, and let them hear directly from peers who have already built low-waste systems that work.
There are two proven paths venues use to cut waste at events: food recovery and composting on one side, and reuse systems that replace single-use dishware on the other. Both were on the table for this conversation, and both came from operators who have lived through the implementation, not just the idea.
Inside the panel
The panel moved past the "why reuse matters" conversation and went straight to how it gets built.
On forecasting and food waste, Chef Eybel described his approach as a mix of data and judgment. Years of event history give his team a baseline, but every group is different.
"Low waste is data plus human experience," Eybel said. "The data tells you the pattern. The experience tells you when this group is going to break it."
He also pointed to something simpler: buffet design. Hyatt has tightened its offerings over time, serving smaller but still satisfying spreads, which has cut waste without cutting guest satisfaction.
On what actually gets a reuse program off the ground, McMenamin was direct that Edgefield's cup program did not happen because of a single green initiative. It happened because of timing, internal champions, financial readiness, and the right outside partner.
"None of this was one big decision," McMenamin said. "It was internal champions, the right timing coming out of COVID, and a sponsor who was ready to back it. Take any one of those away, and it doesn't launch."
He also offered a design note that stuck with the room: reusable cups should not look like souvenirs. If a cup feels like something worth keeping, guests keep it, and the return rate suffers.
On staff adoption, both speakers pushed back on a common assumption: that employees are the obstacle to sustainability programs. They are not. Eybel said Hyatt staff already cared about food donation and composting long before Bridge 13 got involved. The process was just too burdensome to sustain on its own. Once Bridge 13 built a workable recovery flow, adoption followed. McMenamin said the same was true on the reuse side. Staff wanted it and understood the goal. What they needed was a system that made the right action the easy action.
The proof point of the night came from McMenamin's Edgefield's own numbers: the venue's reusable cup program is processing roughly 8,000 cups per concert and hit a 94 percent average return rate in its first month.
From the audience: why Portland, and how do we scale it here
Once the panel opened up, the questions turned toward the room's own venues, and one theme kept surfacing: what makes Portland the right place for this to work?
The panelists pointed to a few concrete answers rather than abstractions. Portland already has reuse and recovery infrastructure in place. There is a cultural familiarity with composting and reuse that most cities are still trying to build from scratch. And the city has visible anchor venues, McMenamins and Hyatt Regency Portland among them, already running these programs in public. Amanda Simons, Sustainability Leader for events, offered a national perspective from event work outside the region: Portland compares favorably to markets where sustainability goals exist on paper. Still, the implementation support behind them is thin.
The infrastructure is here. The partners are here. What Portland needs now is more venues willing to plug into systems that already exist, rather than starting from zero. That is the more widespread version of this story: it is not about convincing more people that waste reduction matters. It is about connecting more venues to the logistics that already make it possible.
Reuse works in Portland, and it is not only a Portland story
Portland's advantages are real, but they are not the whole reason reuse systems succeed. The same operational model behind Edgefield's 94 percent return rate is the model behind Bold Reuse programs at the Kansas City Current and Kansas City Chiefs, venues lacking Portland's built-in sustainability culture or infrastructure. What made those programs work was the same thing McMenamin and Eybel described on this panel: systems designed so the sustainable choice is also the convenient one.
That is the point worth repeating. Reuse is not a Portland phenomenon that happens to be replicable elsewhere. It is an operational model, and Portland is simply one of the strongest proof points for it.
Where we go from here
Portland has the infrastructure, the culture, and the anchor venues to lead on low-waste events, and its hospitality providers are already showing the rest of the industry what that looks like in practice. The next step is not a bigger idea. It is more venues connecting to the systems that are already proven to work.
Bold Reuse and Bridge 13 will keep building that connective tissue, one venue, one event, one return rate at a time.
Keep the conversation going
This panel was a preview of a bigger conversation we're having across the industry. On July 30, we're hosting a webinar for our 2026 Reuse Benchmark Report — a full look at what's actually driving return rates, cost performance, and adoption across the venues already running reuse at scale, including the kind of data behind Edgefield's 94% return rate.