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Dirty jobs that are so important with 406 Recycling – Old Salt Festival edition
June 27, 2026/
| Last weekend I spent four days on the Mannix Ranch at the annual Old Salt Festival, which was in its fourth year. I spent that time collecting recycling and compost from the festival, which was interesting, occasionally gross and ultimately felt really rewarding — and I learned a ton about the field. |
| I was helping out 406 Recycling, owned by Matt Elsaesser, a long-time Helena resident and former commissioner of the city. For years, Matt has been working compost and recycling at events around Montana, including Old Salt. This was his fourth year running the operation, and he also does Red Ants Pants and events in Big Sky. |
| We drove up on Thursday night, set up our camp and got to work. There’s a fair bit of strategy and spending a lot of time watching how crowds move and where people gather — you want to make the recycling and compost bins easily accessible and near trash cans, so people can make that choice easily. |
| This also involved a lot of public outreach. Part of my job was hanging out and watching the recycling and compost bins and letting people know what was compostable, and what wasn’t. For example, Old Salt beer cups from the bar are actually compostable, and I like to think both they and we saved a lot plastic cups from going into the landfill. |
| This also involved having conversations with vendors about what materials they brought to serve customers on as well as working with the Old Salt kitchen staff to make sure they weren’t overflowing with compost. I’d add here that everyone with the festival and ranch was awesome to work with, and I was really impressed at how clean people left the venue and how well they sorted the compost out themselves. |
| The dirtiest part of this job is digging through compost bags, by hand, and pulling out things that will not be accepted by the places Matt takes the compost to. This was really important and something we did on site. |
| Bears, of course, were a major worry, so we locked up all our compost at night — the box truck we had would have been a walk-in buffet if it wasn’t locked up. This also meant some late nights. Each night, there’s these awesome little campfires that the festival has and people gather around them until quite late after the music ends. On the last night, we closed up shop around midnight after setting up one final can collection bin so the late-night partiers could clean up after themselves, which they absolutely did. |
| In between my running around, I also had the chance to meet some extremely interesting people and listen in on a couple of the talks from speakers Old Salt brought in. I cannot stress enough how good of an event this was, and I absolutely will be planning to attend this moving forward. |
| ~ Jordan Hansen ************ Green your event by providing recycling opportunities for event-goers with 406 Recycling!
We provide traditional recycling (plastic bottles, cups, and aluminum cans) at Montana events large and small. Our team has provided recycling at events, including Red Ants Pants (White Sulphur Springs), Symphony Under the Stars (Helena), and the Montana Folk Festival (Butte). Event recycling services include, but are not limited to:
To learn about event recycling services or get a quote for your event email [email protected] or call 406.449.6008. Want to do it yourself? We’re happy to offer advice to make your efforts successful. |
