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Scrappy Sports Club is the sports arm of Scrapp®. At the 2024 season opener for their rugby 7s team, the club used the event as a live field study — tracking every piece of waste generated by 50 supporters to measure the real impact of at-source waste separation at events. The data showed that Scrapp's system could reduce landfill-bound waste at a festival-sized event by up to 95%, with a potential deposit return value of £12,400 for a 10,000-person event.
The invisible waste problem at events and festivals
Events generate enormous amounts of waste in a very short window. Thousands of people, concentrated in one location, consuming food and drinks over a few hours — and almost none of it gets recycled.
The reason is simple: most events don't have recycling infrastructure. Even when recycling bins exist, they're rarely used correctly. Contamination rates at events are significantly higher than in households or workplaces because people are unfamiliar with the venue's waste setup, they're distracted, and there's no guidance at the point of disposal. The result is that the vast majority of event waste — including material that's perfectly recyclable — goes straight to landfill.
This isn't a niche problem. The UK events industry alone generates hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste annually. Festivals, sports tournaments, corporate events, and community gatherings all face the same pattern: waste is generated at scale, collected in mixed bags, and hauled to landfill because nobody sorted it at source.
The economics are equally wasteful. Drinks containers — cans, bottles, cups — make up a huge proportion of event waste. These materials have real value in the recycling stream. Aluminium cans, PET bottles, and glass are some of the most valuable recyclable commodities. But when they're mixed with food waste, napkins, and general rubbish, that value is destroyed. The material goes to landfill, the event organiser pays disposal fees, and the circular economy loop stays broken.
Scrapp wanted to prove that it didn't have to be this way. The Scrappy Sports Club rugby 7s tournament at the Summer and Fitness Social, run by Gym + Coffee in June 2024, was the testing ground.
How Scrapp tracked every piece of waste at the event
The Summer and Fitness Social drew thousands of festival-goers to watch sports, compete in CrossFit events, and enjoy live music. The Scrappy Sports Club rugby 7s team brought 50 supporters to the event — and used the day as a controlled field study.
The methodology was straightforward: every piece of waste generated by the supporters was collected and tracked through Scrapp's waste categorisation system. Every can, every bottle, every food wrapper, every napkin — logged, categorised by material and component, and analysed for recyclability.
This mattered because the event itself had no recycling bins on the premises. That meant 100% of waste generated by every attendee was destined for landfill. Without intervention, everything the supporters consumed would have ended up in the same place as everyone else's waste — buried.
The data collection covered:
- Material-level categorisation of every waste item generated by the 50-person group
- Component breakdown identifying the most common materials, products, and beverage types in the waste stream
- Weight tracking to measure total waste generated per person
- Recyclability analysis assessing what proportion of the waste could have been diverted from landfill through at-source separation
- Contamination accounting to ensure the diversion estimates were realistic, not theoretical
The goal wasn't just to count waste. It was to build a data-backed case for what at-source separation could achieve at events — and what organisers are currently losing by not doing it.
We pulled people together from all walks of life, and everyone bought into the sustainability ethos that Scrapp provides. The more success we find, the more people buy into the idea that we need to change our waste habits.
Ioan Gwynne Davies
What the data revealed
The results from just 50 people told a compelling story:
- 0.5kg of waste per person — the average waste generated by each supporter over the course of the event
- 25kg total solid waste collected from the group
- Drinks packaging accounted for over 50% of all plastic generated — making it the single largest waste category by a significant margin
- 95% landfill diversion was achievable — by applying Scrapp's at-source separation system, only 5% of the total waste would have needed to go to landfill, even accounting for contamination rates
- The most common materials were aluminium cans, PET bottles, and cardboard packaging — all high-value recyclable commodities that were destined for landfill without separation
When scaled to a 10,000-person event — roughly the size of the Summer and Fitness Social — the projected impact was significant:
- 4.46 tonnes of waste diverted from landfill through at-source separation
- £12,400 in deposit return value recoverable from drinks containers alone, based on the UK's planned Deposit Return Scheme pricing
- For a festival the size of Glastonbury, that deposit value scales to nearly £250,000 per day
These projections aren't based on best-case assumptions. They account for realistic contamination rates and only include materials with verified recycling pathways.
The economic case: why event organisers are leaving money in the bin
The deposit return data is particularly striking. The UK's Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is designed to incentivise the collection of drinks containers by assigning a monetary deposit to each one. At events, where drinks containers dominate the waste stream, this creates a significant revenue opportunity that most organisers are currently ignoring.
An internal DRS system — where drinks containers are separated at source and redeemed — could unlock real value. More importantly, it isolates the highest-value materials from the rest of the waste stream. This produces a cleaner recycling stream with higher resale value and lower contamination costs. For event organisers already paying substantial waste disposal fees, the economics flip from cost centre to partial cost recovery.
Beyond deposit returns, at-source separation reduces landfill gate fees (the most expensive disposal route), creates the potential for material recovery revenue from clean recyclable streams, and reduces the risk of contamination charges from waste haulers.
The environmental impact at scale
4.46 tonnes of waste diverted from landfill at a single 10,000-person event is significant on its own. But the real environmental value is in what doesn't happen when that waste is sorted correctly.
Material that enters landfill is lost permanently from the circular economy. Aluminium that could be recycled indefinitely gets buried. PET that could become new bottles or textiles decomposes over centuries. Food waste that could be composted generates methane — a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than CO2.
At-source separation at events prevents all of this. When a supporter at the rugby 7s tournament separated their aluminium can from their food waste, that can stayed in the recycling loop. Multiply that by the tens of millions of people who attend events in the UK each year, and the aggregate impact of getting separation right at events becomes enormous.
There's also a behavioural dimension. The data showed that when people are given clear guidance on how to sort waste — even in a festival setting where they're relaxed and distracted — they do it. The education doesn't stay at the event either. Festival-goers who sort correctly at an event carry those habits into their daily lives.
The social proof: sport as a vehicle for behaviour change
Scrappy Sports Club exists to promote Scrapp's mission through sport. The rugby 7s team competes in tournaments that attract the corporate demographic — exactly the audience that makes purchasing decisions about waste management at their organisations. The club functions as field marketing: the more success on the pitch, the more the Scrapp name reaches decision-makers in a setting where they're open to conversation.
But the social impact goes beyond brand awareness. Every Scrappy Sports Club event is a live demonstration that waste sorting works in high-volume, low-infrastructure environments. The supporters who participated in the field study didn't just generate data — they proved that regular people, at a festival, with no recycling bins in sight, could reduce their landfill contribution to just 5% of total waste when given the right system.
That's a powerful message for event organisers, venue managers, and festival sponsors who assume recycling at events is too logistically complex to be worthwhile. The data says otherwise.
Want to track waste at your next event?
If you're an event organiser or business looking to understand the waste impact of your events, reduce disposal costs, and unlock the value sitting in your waste stream — book a 15-minute call with the Scrapp team.
See how other organisations are using Scrapp to cut waste costs and divert material from landfill: Custom Machine | National Grid | Re3