Friday is garbage day in my neighborhood. Ever since we moved to Cleveland, I have been amazed at the amount of trash that residents of Cleveland throw away. I am sure that I have written about this before, but In Portland, we paid a monthly fee for garbage service and it was tiered by the amount of cans you had. It was not cheap either. For $35 a month, you got a single large garbage can-and this was in the late 90′s. But this way of dealing with trash had interesting results.
First, curbside recycling was king. In order to get your trash to fit in a single can, you had to recycle. Secondly, less was disposed of. Usable goods were creatively reused or refurbished. If you had to find a truck and haul your old couch to the dump, where you paid to dispose of it, you were much more likely to call Salvation Army, find a friend or list sell it for cheap sale. This meant that a lot of stuff was reused that in this part of the country is taken to landfill. Thirdly, this high recycling rates means a plethora of recyclable materials. This makes it easier and cheaper to incorporate goods with recycled materials into your business and personal life.
When we bought our first house, I was determined not to have to pay for this service. We went 3 years without any home garbage service. This meant that we had to be creative. We began to really be discerning about the packaging that came with the things we bought, as this was the largest amount of our waste stream. We recycled everything we could. We began to compost. All organic materials went into the compost bin. We found that what was left was mostly some plastic wrap and packing materials. This process left us with a great new attitude toward waste. We started looking at all the packaging that things came with. How much packaging was there? Was it recyclable? How easily? (Let’s face it, who wants to spend half an hour taking the metal off of a cardboard tube of peanuts?) Was there a better alternative? We found ourselves buying more in bulk. Reusing plastic bags. Buying less that we didn’t need, and thinking about life cycles of the things we did buy. For Portland, we fit right it… So, moving to Cleveland was a culture shock. A family of four might have a half dozen garbage cans on the curb every week. It fit right in with the furniture, building materials, and lawn waste that sits there every week.
I.t is not a huge surprise that I got involved with the zero waste core group of E4S. Along with a growing base of companies, Great Lakes Design Collaborative has declared a Zero Waste BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) for 2019. Our goal? To be a zero waste company by 2019. We are not alone. We are in good company with businesses like Great Lakes Brewing and Trinity Cathedral. We all want to make our locations zero waste producers. But it is more than just a feel good thing. Reducing waste can significantly affect the bottom line. Big locations like Trinity Cathedral, which operates Trinity Commons, can generate large amounts of trash. The more they reduce, the fewer the pick ups they need to schedule for their dumpster. This can mean thousands of dollars in savings every year. As the cost of transporting and disposing of waste only continues to rise, this savings will continue to increase.
One thing that the Zero Waste group is doing is hosting a series of workshops on getting your company to zero waste. The latest one featured teams from NASA and Fairmount minerals. They set their zero waste goal and they learned about how to start to achieve this goal. After the workshop, the groups will conduct a dumpster dive. This will give them a real and true idea of just what they are throwing away. I spoke with others who have done this and they are always surprised to find that much of what they throw away every day is easy to divert from landfill. Then comes the next step: setting goals. Part 2 of their workshop will look at the data from their dive and figure out what they can easily start recycling. Then we will look at the next few steps and how we can help them reduce in other ways. Some things might be simple, switching from one product with a non recyclable package to a similar one that does recycle. Others may end up being something that has to be tackled later in the process. The key to this workshop is that it is tailored to those enrolled, and every company has different needs.
Have you thought about how your company can reduce its waste, and the dollars it takes to dispose of that waste? Why not ask your boss or administrator to have your company sign up for a zero waste workshop? The next date will be Akron in August. If you are a Clevelander, do not fear as there will be another in the September in Cleveland.
Find out more about Zero Waste and how you can be a part of this great movement. Want to know more about a workshop? Feel free to contact me and I will make sure to follow up with you personally.
