MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment and Las Vegas Sands Corp. are among the Las Vegas resort operators working to cut waste and boost recycling, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.
Waste management efforts include composing thousands of tons of leftover food, sending used shampoo bottles and bars of soap to poor countries, recycling plastic room keys and loyalty club cards and turning them into are picture frames or siding, transforming wine corks into sandals, and reconstituting crushed empty beer and liquor bottles as decorative blocks.
Caesars Entertainment is launching a pilot program to send cigarette butts to a recycler that will use the leftover tobacco and the plastic in the filters, the Review-Journal reports.
MGM’s chief sustainability officer, Cindy Ortega, tells the newspaper that her company has more than tripled its recycling rate since 2007 and diverts about 44 percent of its waste.
MGM last year signed on to the EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge and pledged a 5 percent cut in food waste in its first year.
It has also set a goal to send at least half of its waste to someplace other than a landfill by next year; Caesars’ has set the same target for 2020.
Sands has an average diversion rate of over 55 percent at The Venetian and Palazzo and almost 80 percent at the Sands Expo and Convention Center.
Photo Credit: MGM Grand by Jason Patrick Ross Shutterstock.com
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