This week, I have been reflecting about just where waste fits into sustainability programs and the metrics around it. It is a topic that many of us overseeing sustainability programs have at least likely pondered on. Energy reduction directly impacts energy source reductions associated with Greenhouse Gases. Water conservation directly impacts water availability and quality. But waste?
Actually waste checks all the above boxes, decaying trash generates greenhouse gasses while landfills have the potential to impact water tables if not managed properly. Much like energy and water, reduction in waste can lead to operational expense reduction, positively impacting NOI.
The waste stream is perhaps the most visible environmental impact of a property. Stakeholders see the trash can, and potentially recycling container, at their feet near their desk. They see waste collection points strategically placed in office areas, break rooms and restrooms. The presence of a recycling program, and perhaps composting, speaks to your efforts to avoid the landfill, and reduce your environmental impact.
The challenge of waste however lies in the data, or lack of data. Unless you have a compactor, you likely have very little insight into your waste stream. The waste stream tends to just happen. When we develop a property, we place containers and enter into a contract, with often no additional interaction unless perhaps it is time for contract renewal, there is a complaint about the appearance, or you start incurring contamination or overage fees.
With Energy and Water, we have a meter, possibly even submeters that measure precisely each unit passing through the meter. Insight into that consumption allows us to benchmark against like units to identify high usage and perhaps even operational issues such as leaks. With waste, until recently we only had a bill. A bill that may arrive quarterly, and may contain little detail other then the actual cost of the service.
Technology however is starting to impact even the neglected waste stream, and just in time as contamination fees and overage fees continue to increase across the country. Cameras added to dumpsters and combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) can actually monitor the content and fullness of trash containers. This takes the guess work out of several aspects of waste stream management. If service is missed, it can be documented and the hauler contacted. If contaminants are introduced, the AI can notify the site maintenance team or valet service to correct the issue.
While it is still lacking actual weight data, this is a vast improvement over using the bill to measure the impact of waste. Data provides the ability to manage, compare and take action when needed.
How are you managing your waste stream? Do you have actual actionable data to help make decisions around it? How confident are you in the waste numbers you submitted on this years annual report? If challenged, can you verify that the volume reported is backed up with something other then assumptions?
Agreed on all counts, but I'd challenge sharing this data with the onsite teams or valet service will not achieve those results, at least I'd challenge it by asking, are there tools that can be shared with these service components that can help achieve those results. What might that look like.
You mention a trash management program that is on site daily and specializes in sorting at the point of disposal, but in some sense is that or could that be the valet company that is already on site? If not, how is it different and if your layering additional services, how is the ROI impacted by having both a valet service and a sorting service, if the valet is not doing both.
I'm by no means saying Valet is the solution, although there are definitely different levels of valet service. If they are working with the property and the data as a participant, it seems that they actually could be part of the solution.
Data and AI are going to be important factors in monitoring and adapting to waste flow in the future. Unfortunately, sharing this data with a Valet program or onsite maintenance team will not achieve the goal everyone is striving for. Valet programs are not truly designed to correct the issue after it has been placed in the bin, and onsite teams rarely have the tools, time or training to correct the issues daily as needed.
Management teams need to utilize a trash management program that is on site daily and specializes in sorting at the point of disposal. One that can use this data real time to direct the sorting teams efforts and advocate for the management team to the hauler to make adjustments to schedule and volume as needed.