Tips, Tricks, and Tools for Smarter Waste Management

Are you actively managing your waste streams—or are you putting colored bins out and hoping people will put the right things in them?

It’s time to take your waste management strategies to the next level. Here’s how to find the problems in your existing practice—and what you can do instead to minimize what you send to the landfill.

How Waste Stream Audits Identify Problems

Smarter waste management starts with knowing what kind of waste is coming out of your facility. A thorough audit can help you uncover waste stream contamination and even potential sources of revenue.

The first option is a visual audit, which doesn’t require you to dig through your waste bins, explained Christian M. Knox, regional sustainability manager for ISS. Instead, you can simply take photos of your various waste streams, look at what sits on top, and label what you can see in the photos. “What’s on top of that waste stream will still give you a good understanding of what is being disposed of in your waste,” Knox said. This is a good option if you’re about to do a project or you’ve just concluded one, he added.

Another option is a physical waste audit, in which you take a sample of the various waste streams in the building, dump it out, and sort through it in detail, labeling which waste stream it came from and even what floor or area the waste stream is from. You’ll categorize every piece of waste found in these bins and label it. “What this allows us to do is get a granular level of detail about what’s in our waste streams,” Knox said. “It’s still a snapshot in time, but it’s a good snapshot in time.”

The data from the physical waste audit will tell you a few things, such as:

• Are people putting the right types of waste in the right containers?
• To what extent are people contaminating the recycling and/or compost streams with items that can’t be recycled or composted?
• Is there a particular type of waste—for example, wax-lined coffee cups—that’s causing more issues than other types?

One client Knox worked with, a global financial services firm, conducted an annual waste audit with ISS’s help and discovered contamination in general waste, mixed recycling, and paper. Based on this data, the company implemented corrective measures, including transitioning all paper waste to a confidential container destined for a shredder.

“We also improved signage, pushed out communications, and had engagement activities on-site,” Knox said. “What we saw was that our general waste contamination improved by upwards of 10%, as well as our mixed recycling.”

4 Ways to Improve Waste Diversion and Disposal

Once your audit reveals where the problems lie, there are a few things you can do to improve how you handle waste—and how your building occupants choose where to deposit it in the first place.

1. Be specific. “If our default is that we try and recycle everything, that ends up being counterproductive,” said Keith Schneringer, senior director of marketing, JanSan + Sustainability, for BradyPLUS. “Be very clear about what we can recycle, whether it’s plastic, aluminum, or glass, and then be very specific about what we can’t recycle. What can happen sometimes is that people with good intentions will put something that can’t be recycled in the recycle stream, and that will end up contaminating the materials that could have been recycled.”

2. Implement circular economy principles. The circular economy, in which waste is not produced because products and materials are maintained, refurbished, and reused, relies on three key tenets, Knox said:

• Eliminate waste and pollution. This includes during the procurement stage. Can your vendors work with you to bring less waste into your facility in the first place?
• Circulate products and materials at their highest value. “That’s making sure when you’re at the point of disposal, that there’s value in items that are being recycled, upcycled, or donated,” Knox said. “There’s another use for them that’s not the landfill or even lower forms of recycling.”
• Regenerate nature. Upcycle items that can be used again or repurposed.

Vendors can sometimes help with this, Knox added. One example is Re:Dish, which provides reusable food packaging solutions to eliminate single-use plastics. The East Coast-based company manages the entire lifecycle of their containers, from bringing them to your facility to washing them for reuse, and is backed by lifecycle assessment data.

3. Don’t ignore buy-in. “I can put together a program I think will work, but it’s the team who’s operating food services who are filling those trays, who know the needs of the customer, the sizes [of containers], and how difficult it will be logistically to manage that program,” Knox said. “You have to work with them every step of the way, and you need their buy-in every step of the way.”

4. Explore technology solutions. Emerging technologies in the waste management space are making it easier to see what you’re throwing away and illustrating where you need to make changes. One example Knox shared is a scale with an AI-powered camera that communicates with a tablet; it scans every item going into the waste bin, weighs it as it’s thrown away, and categorizes the items to give you real-time data about what’s in your waste stream. Others, like Winnow, record food waste generated during meal preparation.

Waste receptacles that can see how full the receptacle is help you minimize the number of trips your hauler takes to your site, Schneringer added.

“There are also some units that have compacting technology that can just take some of the air out of the waste,” Schneringer added. “We’ve found that it can reduce the number of collections by up to 80%. If you’re picking up every single day, potentially, you could pick it up one time per week.”

The Three Cs of Promoting Employee Participation in Waste Management

Waste management programs are nothing without building occupants who actively participate. This three-pronged approach can help you optimize proper waste disposal and diversion.

Communication: This step entails thoughtful signage to help build a culture of doing the right thing, Schneringer explained. It can also include your employee newsletter, where you can talk about results and celebrate successes.

Committees: This “C” step could also stand for champions—as in employees who are particularly energized about improving waste management at your organization. Enlist their help to think about ways to increase diversion rates.

Competition: Gamifying waste management can help encourage people who otherwise wouldn’t care about which waste stream they put their waste in. “Have some fun with it,” Schneringer encouraged. “Sometimes people respond more positively to this idea of going toward something, as opposed to being deprived of something. If you can try and have fun, it helps build camaraderie and make some incremental improvements.”

Waste management is a never-ending task, but it can also be a good way to improve your facility’s operations. Smarter strategies around waste, recycling, and composting can help you find and resolve the issues with your current practices and operate your facility more sustainably.