Becoming A “Zero Landfill Company” Is A Journey

Being completely trash-free is a daunting task.  Even a company in the business of “green” with highly educated Eco Patriots is challenged by this.  Last week, Eco-Products reviewed our waste diversion results from 2009.  We strive to divert 100% of our waste from landfills – everything is either composted or recycled.

Last year, we diverted 7 tons of compost/recyclable materials from the landfill out of total of 10.95 tons of waste – that’s a 64% diversion rate.  Honestly, it wasn’t as high as we had hoped.  We think some of the factors that may have contributed to our lower than expected % were:

1. Moving to a larger building in which people were more spread out and couldn’t closely monitor each other’s disposal habits
2. More employees which makes waste management more difficult
3. Battling with illegal midnight dumping of construction debris in our dumpsters
4. Bringing more waste into the building from the outside
5. Not doing as much continual reinforcement and education with employees as in prior years.

In a company meeting, we reaffirmed our commitment towards waste diversion and set a goal of achieving at least 80% in 2010.  At the meeting, our CEO made a great comment about how he views our work environment.  Since starting at the company 8 months ago, he has viewed the building as a campsite in which he tries to leave no trace.  Whatever he packs in he packs out.  What a great philosophy to make you think twice about the packaging you use/buy.

Here are some steps we are going to take to achieve our goal this year:

• Continue to only have trash bins in centralized locations, no bins in offices/cubes
• Make a more conscious effort to treat the building as a leave-no-trace zone.  Pack-in-pack-out mentality.
• Monitor our diversion rate quarterly instead of annually.
• Search for solutions to products we currently don’t recycle or compost.  For example, the wrapping on reams of paper can’t be recycled or composted due to their lining.
• Be more diligent about recycling hard to recycle items such as plastic bags and block styrofoam.  Drop them off at a local hard-to-recycle facility.
• Install locks on our dumpsters.
• Educate, educate, educate.  We are inviting in a representative from Eco-Cycle, a local recycler, who can answer our recycling questions.
• Tour a Material Recovery Facility (MRF) – a recycling center – to see first hand what is considered a contaminant.  I’ll be doing this in the middle of March.
• Hang up more signage near our recycling/compost/trash bins