Waste Audits

What's in an Average Waste and Recycling Container?

The Good, the Bad and the 'WHAT'?!

 

Background:

Earlier this summer, several American Disposal employees were asked to conduct a comprehensive waste and recycling audit for one of our commercial customers. Needless to say, American Disposal was up for the challenge and excited to see the results!

But wait… ‘What is a waste and recycling audit and how does a work?’, you might ask.

A waste audit is a comprehensive analysis of the trash or recycling that is ACTUALLY being collected in a particular dumpster.

 

First, the trash (or recycling) dumpster is emptied out and our dedicated ADS employees carefully sift through all the contents… by hand. (This is certainly a job for gloves!)

During this enlightening (albeit messy) survey process, we sort the content into piles based on material type: recyclable items vs. non-recyclable (waste only) items.

 

It is becoming more common for our customers to request these audit services. Offices, in particular, are eager to know exactly what is being disposed of in both their waste and recycling containers. Influences from both government legislation and building operating standards have become sustainably-minded over the past decade, and proper recycling is the first and most important step for a business to achieve and maintain sustainability or to seek LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification.

The Recycling Audit:

In order to conduct the audit, the customer's large 8-yard trash dumpster and smaller 2-yard recycling dumpster were removed from the site and brought to our facility with the contents still inside.

The recycling dumpster was dumped on to the open floor. Three ADS employees carefully sifted through the contents of the dumpster and separated it into a series of carts based on material type.

The materials found within were reported as follows:

55% by volume-plastic

30% by volume-paper

10% by volume-mixed metals

(aluminum, steel)

5% by volume-contamination

(mostly plastic bags/films & Styrofoam)

None of these findings were too shocking as ADS anticipated the bulk of the recyclable material used in an office building would be comprised of plastic containers and white paper.

The Waste Audit:

Then our employees went on to sort through the 8 yard trash collection dumpster; the results of THIS survey proved to be quite shocking indeed!

 

Just as with the recycling portion of the audit, ADS employees sorted the contents of multiple bags of trash.

When they were finished, the audit revealed that 60% of the material thrown into the waste dumpster was recyclable!....Yet being disposed of as trash! What a waste!.....Literally! (see below)

Unfortunately, the findings of this audit are common to many office buildings across our area.

Once a recyclable is tossed in with the trash it will NEVER have the opportunity to regenerate new products or save energy and resources: it will instead be doomed for eternity in a landfill or incinerator.

 The Take-Away:

It is clear that TOO MANY recyclables are being thrown away as trash and collected as waste. We hope audits like this one will shed light on the problem and give our customers (and the community) the information they need to understand that we ALL can help.

Simply by taking a moment to Think Before You Throw we can ensure that all recyclable items end up in the correct dumpster so they can be converted into new products and help keep our environment clean, green and sustainable!

 

Plastic Water Bottles

Featuring Guest Blogger: Talia Schmitt

This week, The Green Scene welcomes its first guest blogger; Talia Schmitt.

Talia is a Fairfax County High School Graduate and one of two recent recipients of American Disposal Service's first Environmental Stewardship Scholarship.

She plans to pursue her interest in environmental leadership and education through her upcoming gap year which includes exploring environmental injustices.

During her recent trip to France, Talia conducted extensive research on European recycling practices and has been good enough to share some of her findings with American.

 

Plastic Water Bottles

Talia Schmitt

Plastic, convenient, and refreshing. Guessed it? The Plastic Water Bottle. 

For a culture so aware of the serious environmental threats we face, it is interesting to see how many plastic water bottles the French use. For instance, we were at the IEA (International Energy Agency) discussing environmental sustainability, and what are we offered? Plastic bottles.

Even worse, 15 out of the 16 people drank them. Yes, that one person was me. So what is it- there is clean tap water in the bathroom to fill up reusable bottles? Well, let’s start from the beginning.

Believe it or not, the water bottle industry started in France with the company Perrier in the 1970s. It was for the elite. With the “most natural” of all waters, why would it not be (disclosure: in reality 40% of bottled water is really filtered tap water)? It was brought to America from there where it simply became the convenient norm. Did you know that Americans use enough water bottles to circle around the earth 250 times in just one year! Crazy, anyway, back to France.

It has become such a standard, that no one thinks otherwise. While many Parisians will pass a plastic bag tax in a second, they will not think twice about gulping down a plastic water bottle, and then throwing it in the trash. Trash not recycling.

Granted there are some recycling bins, but for all the bottled drinks that Parisians use, you would think there would be more. I have been playing a little game to see how long it takes me to find a recycling bin after a nice Orangina.

So far my average time is twenty minutes. Twenty minutes- while looking. Remember that convenience is the number one key to recycling, so if there are no recycling cans in sight, most people will not hold on to a bottle 20 minutes, never the less, 1 minute before they toss it. That being said, some of the French bottled water companies do something very interesting...

According to a lead environmental researcher, they pay the plastic bottle tax. This is basically a few cents in advance per bottle that later goes to fund the recycling pick up. This has been encouraged and tried in a few parts of the States (6 states have adopted this method of funding for bottled water).

The company is able to put the label “100% recyclable” (NOTE: Recyclable, not recycled material!), to show their generosity. Unfortunately, in the US many of the bottled water industries such as Pepsi and Nestle have too much power for this ever to happen.

Either way, the French are ahead on their way of funding the bottles, but as for the use of them- that is another story. Like I said before, it is just engrained in the culture. And once something is engrained in a culture, especially the Parisian culture, it is hard to change.