BOCA RATON, Fla. — This weekend, the top 54 PGA Tour Champions players are heading to the finals at the Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club in Boca Raton to play for a $2,200,000 purse.
The tournament organizers said they’ve become a certified zero-waste event. Organizers said there will be zero waste from food and beverage, netting, plastics and trash because they have identified waste streams so materials can be be repurposed, recycled, composted, donated and/or re-used.
“It is it takes months and months to put into practice. We think about everything including the netting [along the course] the cutlery that the folks are using that are enjoying hospitality, all of those things we work to find streams to recycle or reuse,” said tournament director Jennifer Hines.
Working with leaders from Palm Beach County, and Boca Raton, and AZEK (TimberTech’s parent company), to achieve the accreditation.
“That's where the sustainable event management plan comes into place. We had partners from Sustainable Solutions Corp come in and help us design the sustainable event management plan.... …Most of the waste can just be sent into the compost bin and then taken to the digester at the Broken Sound Club,” said Amanda Cimaglia who is the vice president of The AZEK Company.
The Broken Sound Club will use the compost to fertilize their soil on its golf course.
The tournament is collecting plastic bags from people attending the event that will be eventually recycled into the title sponsor’s decking products. Last year, the event collected 5,000 grocery, shopping and newspaper bags.
“We take hundreds of millions of pounds of waste and trash that otherwise and bound for local landfills across the US and we're able to process that at our vertically integrated recycling facilities and turn it into our beautiful Timber Tech decking that you see all along the course,” said Cimaglia.
Traditionally the event is held at the Broken Sound Club but this year that course is undergoing renovations and the venue changed a few weeks ago.
Because of the last minute relocation there are no general admission tickets being sold. Organizers said they weren’t sure if the golf course had the capacity to host fans, but they are selling hospitality passes for the chalets.
The first round of the TimberTech Championship gets underway on Friday.
