The WM Phoenix Open offers more than a party-like atmosphere; it’s a model for every major event.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — It’s 5 a.m. at TPC Scottsdale, and roughly 120 WM employees have arrived for their call time at the Sustainability Headquarters, a make-shift area perched beside the 13th green and the 14th tee. It’s cold and dark, and the golf course is not even visible. But everyone here is wearing a smile on their face, ready to tackle another day of keeping the WM Phoenix Open a zero-waste event.
After settling in, snacking on breakfast, and sipping coffee, this group is ready for their morning meeting, which begins every day at 5:30. Director of Advisory Services Lee Spivak and Chad Bowden, the Director of Collections Operations for the Four Corners, lead the way, providing enthusiasm and instilling confidence into everyone in attendance. Those employees are all zone directors for the week, committing their time to making the WM Phoenix Open the gold standard for sustainability. Spivak and Bowden also reinforce the rules for vendors, ensuring everyone, including those selling food, alcohol, and merchandise, employ reusable means and correctly dispose of what they no longer need. Should one of the zone directors spot a violation, they should immediately call Spivak, who will take care of the issue and educate the guilty party on how to improve their locale.
Immediately after their morning meeting concludes around 6 a.m., the 120 zone directors locate their golf carts and head to their respective areas. Some are assigned to the well-traversed spots around the clubhouse, while others have the daunting task of keeping the 16th hole, with its famous ‘Coliseum’ that houses over 20,000 fans, clean and waste-free. Each zone director will go on to lead the roughly 600 temporary workers hired for the week, sweeping bins, and keeping the course clean. But they do not have much time to get TPC Scottsdale ready. The rabid fans who help make the tournament unique arrive at 7 a.m., meaning all involved have less than an hour to prepare.
Of course, the WM Phoenix Open is known as ‘The People’s Open,’ one big party that should be on every golf fan’s bucket list. The 16th hole receives most of the attention because nothing in golf compares to it. But if you ever attend the WM Phoenix Open, you will not see a trace of waste, an impressive reality given that well over 100,000 visit the course daily. Saturday’s third round often sees more than 200,000 visitors, a preposterous number that no other American sporting event can compare.
Small yellow and green bins — 4,800 in total — are everywhere on the course. You cannot miss them as you traverse TPC Scottsdale. The yellow bins collect items for compost, such as reusable coffee cups, food scraps, napkins, and utensils made of bamboo. The green bins receive bottles, cans, and reusable cups.
Whenever a bin reaches capacity, a WM zone manager or temporary worker sorts through it, ensuring everything discarded is adequately placed. That process starts immediately after the morning meeting concludes and continues throughout the day.
Despite the massive influx of people, the WM Phoenix Open is still a zero-waste event, something WM has prided itself on since this tournament became fully sustainable and waste-free in 2013.
The day-to-day operations at the 16th hole exemplify this.
Massive dumpsters line the periphery of the stadium, but they sit behind fences, barely noticeable to the countless fans walking by. They correspond with the bins on the course: yellow for compost and green for recyclables. But instead of vendors, employees, and temporary workers hauling full bins up and down the stadium stairs, each dumpster has tall shutes extending to the top of the stadium. On every level, a shute has an opening that correlates with the applicable colors: yellow for compost and green for recyclables. It’s a remarkable yet simple process that makes it easy for everyone to dispose of what they no longer need.
Jack Milko/SB Nation
Dozens of these shutes line the stadium’s suite levels on the 16th hole, all necessary since food vendors and bars are located every 10 feet within the corridors. Small white tubs are also scattered throughout the suite areas, collecting only ice water. The water is then repurposed and recycled for those across Arizona, another crucial part of this tournament and its sustainability efforts.
The food is even given out in recycled paper cups, whether it’s a Caesar salad, pasta dish, chicken, or brisket. The portions are also correctly allocated. M Culinary Concepts, the company that manages food operations for the tournament’s hospitality areas, conducted countless studies to ensure people do not waste too much. Each portion this year is roughly eight ounces, an impressive detail that could easily go unnoticed. However, should people have leftovers that they throw away, those food scraps are collected by WM. The scraps are then distributed to worm farms, which create compost and nutrient-rich fertilizers for gardening and agriculture.
Everything on the property can be reusable, including the merchandise, which features apparel made from plastic bottles. Yes, WM collects bottles and cans, breaks them down into bits, and ships the pieces to a facility in North Carolina, which then makes yarn. The yarn is then used to create shirts, pullovers, and hats, all of which are available in the Merchandise Tent at TPC Scottsdale. You cannot tell the difference between products either.
“We’re really proud of how [the WM Phoenix Open] is connected to our brand purpose, which is always working for a sustainable tomorrow in the game of golf. We are always working for a sustainable tomorrow. We focus on three sentiments at WM: materials are repurposed, energy is renewable, and communities are thriving,” WM Chief Customer Officer Michael Watson explained to SB Nation.
“If you think about communities are thriving, one of the things we’re really proud of at this event is since we’ve been title sponsor in 2010, we’ve been involved with the Thunderbirds in donating over $142 million to local charities across the valley and even last year we raised $17.5 million.”
Part of those charitable efforts goes to the Working for Tomorrow Fund, which is intended to reduce emissions, support material management, and sustain water management projects in Arizona. The Southwestern United States has long had a water shortage, so preserving as much water as possible is not a choice — it’s a must. The Thunderbirds also donate $1 to the Working for Tomorrow Fund for everyone who wears green on Saturday; other sponsors, vendors, and private donors support the fund, too. The 2024 tournament raised $419,000 for this fund, an impressive amount for its first year.
But now, WM is looking to apply these strategies to other events, both in and outside golf. They have partnered with the U.S. Open and, most recently, established a relationship with Major League Baseball. WM will bring these efforts to this year’s All-Star game in Atlanta.
WM has become a model for facilitating a zero-waste event and educates everyone who attends. For a better, more sustainable tomorrow, everyone, from the WM employees to the players to the fans, has to contribute their fair share — and to the benefit of the environment in and around Arizona, the 2025 WM Phoenix Open exemplified that.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.
