Summary

In this podcast, I share my experience setting up and running an environmental event in Portland in mid-October, called the Zero Waste Conference

I discuss ways in which I applied Lean and Six Sigma concepts to the event, such as Lean Startup, Pareto charts, FMEA, forecasting and predictions on attendance, net promoter score (NPS), check-in area flow optimization, and customer feedback data.

I also share ways in which we made the event more sustainable. I discuss name tags, event agenda, tickets, food and drink, waste prevention and “pack in, pack out”

Links

* Zero Waste Conference

* Recycling Advocates

* Zero Waste PDX Facebook Group

* Conscious by Chloe

* Tips and tricks for more efficient and effective PFMEAs

* Master Recycler Program

* Bring Your Own Cup (BYOC) coffee cup reduction program

* Stumptown Media Group

Transcript

In this episode, I talk about a zero waste conference I helped set up for the nonprofit I run, Recycling Advocates. The conference was really about trying to bring people together to educate them around how they can apply zero waste principles to their life and also a little bit around how zero waste is being applied to business. We decided to put on a conference as a fundraiser for the nonprofit organization and also start to build the network of people who are really taking on this zero waste lifestyle. It’s really gaining a lot of traction, especially here in Portland.

I just want to talk about how I took some of the Lean Six Sigma concepts and applied it to this conference. This is probably the first conference I’ve really put on of decent size. We had like 100 people there, so it was more than just a training or a meeting and so a little nervous about how this would work out, but just wanted to share with you some of the examples and things we went through and what I learned from that.

The first thing that we end up doing with the conference was figuring out if there was interest. We went into the event with some knowledge that there was some interest. And this is, we, I’m talking about a woman named Chloe (Lepeltier), who I had met through some other environmental education programs and she had done a little bit of work for the nonprofit around our Bring Your Own Cup campaign. She has set up a Facebook group around Zero Waste Portland, called Zero Waste PDX, and I’ll put links to these topics and groups in the show notes.

She had done a lot of work and built up a really good network of people. Part of the Recycling Advocates nonprofit I run is really trying to figure out where do we go from just the recycling discussion and how do we get ahead of this discussion around recycling and start to get into waste minimization and prevention, which is something that’s always key in terms of process improvement – how do we get ahead of problems, avoid them in the first place. Recycling is considered kind of the end of the value stream. It’s, “Okay,