NBA Portland Trailblazers Brittany Saulsbury

https://www.nba.com/blazers/reuse

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanysaulsbury/
Did you know the Trailblazers have saved over 160,000 cups from the landfill? 
How did the Blazers become the first American venue to serve Notpla Seewead? 
Why is sustainability so important in the Northwest? 

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is Brittany Saulsbury the Sustainability Operations Manager for the Portland Trailblazers. How are you, Brittany?

Brittany Saulsbury: 0:43

I am doing good.

Cory Connors: 0:44

How about you? Good. I am honored to get to interview you. I'm a huge Blazers fan as a Portlander and, I'm excited to just, be a part of what you and your team are doing there at the Moda Center. It's an incredible feat. I'm excited to share it with the audience, but can you tell us a little bit about your background before we go too far into sustainability?

Brittany Saulsbury: 1:09

Yeah, of course. My background is in actually. Green building consulting and sustainability consulting. So prior to my time at Portland trailblazers, I spent about 8 years as a sustainability consultant, really focusing on commercial building certifications, like lead and the well building standard, but also larger portfolio level, sustainable design guidelines and operational standards for corporate clients.

Cory Connors: 1:42

That's a great background for what you're doing now. I think that's really cool, to see someone transition from building and construction to more, holistic, sustainability. it's really cool. before we go too much further, I want to explain to the audience. who the trailblazers are can, should we talk about that a little bit, before we go too crazy? I think it's pretty, pretty obvious to most, but I wanted to just say that they are our local, professional basketball team and have been around since, 1971, if I recall, is that right? Something like that.

Brittany Saulsbury: 2:19

I believe so. I should know that. I should know that, but you're talking to the sustainability

Cory Connors: 2:25

person. That's all right. That's all right. We, we won the championship in 1977. Yep. And I was actually there, my mom was pregnant with me when they won. And so she, her and my dad. We're at the game where they won, so I get to tell people that I was there when they won.

Brittany Saulsbury: 2:47

That's awesome. hopefully we'll win another one, that you'll get to see.

Cory Connors: 2:51

I would love that. I'll be there. oftentimes I'm asked when I'm interviewed on podcasts. Why is sustainability so important to me as a Northwesterner? It's just been ingrained in our lives. But why is it so important to the Trailblazers? Why is sustainability so important?

Brittany Saulsbury: 3:11

Yeah, so we have a long history as an organization of really being, leaders. In sustainability and being on the forefront of that, all the way back to, like, 2007, I would say 2008 when we really started diving more heavily into our sustainability goals. I think for us 1, our city, we have a lot of environmentally conscious people in Portland. so we're in the market where people care about that. But I think it's bigger than that. I think as an NBA team, we have a big impact on our community and we're really able to give back to our community. Through various different community events and programs we have, but then we also have to think about the sustainability side and how that impacts our community as well. Right? We want to make sure we're trailblazing a legacy, so to speak for future generations. So we can continue to play basketball into the future. So we really do have that commitment to protecting the places we live, learn and play. And protecting our community, because if we're just, tossing 600 tons of waste into a landfill every year, that's not doing anything to protecting our community. That's hurting our community. We want to make sure we're giving back both directly and indirectly to our

Cory Connors: 4:37

community. I love that. That's exactly right. And how are the fans responding to some of your initiatives? Are you getting mostly positive feedback from these ideas?

Brittany Saulsbury: 4:49

Yeah, we are getting mostly positive feedback from our sustainability initiative. So that's really great to see. I wish I had more current numbers for you, but we actually are working on getting more survey data just to really Get a more recent, statistic on how much what percentage of our fans really care about these things. so we can continue to build and. Make these programs even better into the future.

Cory Connors: 5:14

I see even brighter things for you in the future and for the trailblazers and for all of Oregon. I think you're right. Hopefully that will lead into other teams following suit saying, oh. The Blazers, did something that worked really well. we could do that too. And are you getting calls from other teams or other organizations saying, how did that come about? What, what was the impetus for that kind of thing?

Brittany Saulsbury: 5:39

We are, especially with our RIP city reuse program that we launched this season. we're getting a lot of interest in having actually a lot of teams come visit just to see operationally how that. Is working for us and how we were able to get it off the ground and how we're working things on the back end, but our fans might not see, and just how that's working and how they could potentially implement it at their arenas and venues as well. So that's really cool to see and it's not even just NBA teams. It's other large venues that are very interested.

Cory Connors: 6:13

It's such a perfect solution. I'm totally impressed with that. how did that idea come to be? was it presented to you or was it your thought?

Brittany Saulsbury: 6:22

so when I started, over about 2 years ago, when I started. We about, I don't know how many months prior it may be, like, 6 months prior, there had been changes in local waste management specifically around compost and the city no longer accepting composable service where, which we had been sending to be composted for years. We had transitioned most of our concession products to compostables and unfortunately, when that change happened. we could still send our food waste to compost, but we could no longer send our compostable service where, to compost. So we were landfilling that for a period of time while we were trying to figure out a solution and. We were able to figure out a solution to where we are able now to compost those items privately, which is very exciting. We're working with a farmer and in brother and in brothers farms. he takes those items. He compost it. He use that compost to grow organ hazelnuts, which is amazing. So it stays here locally and it's used locally. but. That took a while that took a while to happen and pull that off in the interim. we were also, I was also thinking creatively around. Okay. How could we address the waste in a way that we just aren't creating it in the 1st place? And I think people have always thought about reuse and arena, but it has always seemed very daunting. Like, Oh, that's going to create so such a logistical nightmare. It's going to be too hard. It's going to add too many labor hours. but I was really interested in it and just exploring that idea. So about a year and a half ago, I reached out to what used to be go box and is now they are now bold reuse. Um, I reached out to them because I knew they were a local company here working in the reuse space. Just to have a conversation and kind of, have a discovery session, get their thoughts on, what might be possible in. In a setting like Moda center, and that's just how this all started. We actually last season did do a small pilot with reusables. That was only on the club level and we were using reusable food trays, and through the success of that program, we were able to do this, full scale program this season with. Every single alcoholic beverage that's poured is now served in a

Cory Connors: 8:57

reusable cup. That's amazing, congratulations, I got the honor of interviewing the team from Bold Reuse, about a year ago, and, they didn't Mentioned this, they, I think they probably knew about it and couldn't talk about it yet, but now that's all they'll talk about.

Brittany Saulsbury: 9:15

Yeah, they have been great to work with and it just worked out so well to that. They are only about a mile and a half away from the arena. So the transportation footprint of taking the cops there to be washed is very minimal. which to me was something that was, important if we were going to have a successful reuse program.

Cory Connors: 9:36

And I, when I toured their facility, I was amazed at how minimal the infrastructure needed to be to accomplish this. And a few washing machines, a bunch of racks, some great workers who are diligent and careful. but were you surprised by that too? How easy not easy, but how simple it was.

Brittany Saulsbury: 9:58

Yeah, I was surprised by that too. It's actually really cool to see how their facility has changed from when I 1st went there about a year and a half ago to now they've definitely made some major upgrades and are getting more and more efficient to do larger volumes in a shorter amount of time. So I love to see that and I think something else that is just beautiful about this partnership is that we're able to support a local business. because again, it just goes back to that community aspect. How can we support our community? And that can look a lot of different ways. It can be work with nonprofits, or it could be, we're giving our business to these smaller local businesses and supporting our local economy.

Cory Connors: 10:40

And a female owned business, which is really cool. they're incredible people there. like you said, local, small business, incredible. couldn't be much better in my opinion. Well done. Any idea how many cups, you have, eliminated from the landfill in this process so far?

Brittany Saulsbury: 11:01

yeah, so, right now, I think I checked our tracker the other day. We actually have a live tracker on our landing page for the rip city reuse program, which is a fun thing to engage fans. So they can see that. Physical number, and the impact they're having. but yeah, when I checked yesterday, we're up about 151, 000 cups have been eliminated, and it's just been 2. 5 months of events. So we're really excited. Our target is half a million, for. For the season, or for the year, obviously the season isn't fully a year, but yeah, in a year, we are planning to at least divert half a million from our waste stream, which is really exciting.

Cory Connors: 11:46

That's amazing. incredible, we'll have to figure out the math on how much that how much weight of material that would be, or maybe how many truckloads that would convert to of single use, plastic cups.

Brittany Saulsbury: 11:59

yeah, yep. And I do have the weights, but I would need to run the calculation, but that is something that we're building out in our dashboard or bold reuse is building out in the dashboard for us. So we can just see the weights right there along with that cup count number.

Cory Connors: 12:14

Talk about a motivation for other people to follow suit. I think, this is one of those things where everybody wins as we convert to closed loop systems like this. it just makes sense. I also noticed at a recent concert at your facility there, the Depe Depeche Mode concert, they had even taken another step further and eliminated, single use plastic, water bottles. is that something that, that MOTA's looking into long

Brittany Saulsbury: 12:44

term? It's something we're looking at, so that was a request from Depeche Mode. We're seeing a lot more tours come to us with sustainability riders with specific requirements that they would like us to meet. Obviously, every arena and every locality is different to what they can achieve, but we try and meet as many as we can. And typically we're able to meet almost all of them for that specific concert. We only switched out the suites, so I'm guessing you were in a suite, simply because we weren't able to switch out and flip the whole building just for that one show in time. but it was great for us to be able to do that effort. That is actually a complicated question in terms of me looking to switch out or me looking to see if I should push for us to switch out when we. And we have the bottle bill. so we have bottle drop and we actually do a bottle pick at the end of every event. So we're picking out all the bottles and cans and then those actually get picked up by a non nonprofit groups that then take them to bottle drop and keep that money for their own fundraising, which is a really cool program. We do. But, so back to the plastic versus aluminum, so in Oregon, specifically the issue, I think, with plastic bottles, a lot of the time is. They can often be sent overseas to be recycled, which obviously has a huge carbon footprint, but our plastic bottles that we actually have a plastic bottle recycling facility right here in St. Helens, where they recycle those bottles, the plastic bottles directly. Aluminum actually gets sent, to I believe the South, so it's actually sent farther to be recycled. So it's this catch 22 of do I want to switch to aluminum when that's being sent out farther. The thing is, I do know aluminum is infinitely recyclable, but it is also a more carbon intensive process to recycle and it's being sent farther away. plastic, I do know it has a limit into how much, how. How many times it can be recycled right before it starts to just lose its integrity. So it's something I just haven't addressed yet because I'm like, do we want to pay this more expensive price for aluminum when I, we don't necessarily know if that embodied carbon and that associated carbon footprint with it. Is actually better than plastic when we're in a state that kind of really supports that plastic recycling and we know it's being recycled verse if we were just throwing that into the mixed recycling, I wouldn't count on it being recycled as well as knowing it's being sent to bottle drop.

Cory Connors: 15:43

Great points, and it's fascinating because Oregon was the first, state in the Union to have a bottle deposit scheme, back in, in right about the same time of 1971. So, it's cool to see the blazers and the bottle deposit and all of these things come to fruition at the same time, and to see, Us talking about it still, but the bottle deposit system and the bottle drop, as you call it, is, pretty amazing. And I have to give, I have to commend our state for that leadership. I have spoken with the team over there at bottle drop and People from all over the world are asking them. How do you do this? And how can we replicate this? so we're true leaders here in the Northwest and it's exciting. Yeah, absolutely. any other, projects coming up that you can reveal to us yet or anything that you're looking at? I have to commend you on your green, night. that was incredible. Do you want to talk about that a little bit as well?

Brittany Saulsbury: 16:48

Yeah, sure. So we recently had what we're calling a green game, where it's just really a night where we can highlight sustainability to our fans, the things we do at the arena to be more sustainable, but also then add in some education to our fans and, things they could do. Even things they can do at the arena to be sustainable. For example, return your reusable cup or, like, everything served in the concession stands is in compostable service where I drop that in the compost. So it's just an opportunity to highlight that we used to do these green games in years past, but. With the pandemic and I think just changes in the organization. We actually really haven't had one in about four or five years. So it's really exciting to bring them back. And my plan is that annually we will have a green game. the idea will be earlier in the season so that you have that opportunity to educate fans early in the season around things they can do in the arena to help us be sustainable, things they can do at home as well.

Cory Connors: 17:53

it was an awesome event. And, my whole family was there. My kids truly enjoyed the Jamba Juice, bikes, so they could power the thing and win a, they're so proud of their Blazers cups that they won. Oh yes,

Brittany Saulsbury: 18:08

they got a Timber. Before they ran out, that's good. Yeah, that was a super fun thing. yeah, and we wanted to be conscious of what we were giving away that night. So reusable felt like a great thing to give away as long as they're things that, people would want to use.

Cory Connors: 18:25

Yes, and we should talk about the NotPla Gatorade capsules. do you want to speak to that a little bit?

Brittany Saulsbury: 18:33

Yeah, so we were excited to pilot NotPla at this game and their edible Ojos. so they are a Seaweed packaged edible bubble. they look like a tide pod. I don't want to compare it to that, but that's what they look like. Right. but the coating is completely made out of, seaweed and then you can put or they can infuse it with any type of beverage you want. So they could even do like alcohol in there. but we decided to do Gatorade because that'd just be a fun thing to give away to people. And yeah, it was a really fun, interactive piece that was really just meant to be a fun conversation starter with our fans around packaging and just to get them thinking about packaging and what that what zero waste packaging really could look like in the future.

Cory Connors: 19:27

you're a true leader and an innovator and I'm totally impressed with you and your team. So well done. the notpla thing is. Only been done in Europe so far. So you

Brittany Saulsbury: 19:39

were, you were excited to be the first, us venue or professional sports venue to, to pilot them.

Cory Connors: 19:47

Incredible. They just won a million a pound award from the, earth shot, team, last year, which was incredible, but, I'm excited to see what happens next. Anything else that you can tell us about any sneak peeks for 2024?

Brittany Saulsbury: 20:03

at this time, I don't have anything I can share, but, I'm going to continue to push us to innovate even more. that's my goal for us to just continue to innovate. We're really lucky to that. We're we are in a bit of a smaller market as an NBA team, and that does give us a little bit more freedom to do these really innovative pilots, like rip city reuse, like, working with not plot, and just, really. Lean into that innovation and new things and not be afraid to, try new things. yeah.

Cory Connors: 20:38

keep up the great work. How do people get in touch with you and the Blazers to buy, season tickets or support the team? Brittany Saulsbury: Yeah, so if go to www.nba.com/blazers and you can purchase tickets there. and then if you'd like to get in touch with me. LinkedIn is probably the best location. you can just look me up by my name, Brittany Salisbury, and you can get into contact with me that way. Thanks again, Brittany. Really appreciate your time and your wisdom and keep up the great work over there.

Brittany Saulsbury: 21:12

Yeah. Thank you so much, Corey.