single stream recycling

Actually you will indeed still need to sort materials from the single-stream collection Courtney. Remember that the purpose of the waste audit is not only to assess the overall relative amount of recycled vs non-recycled waste leaving the building - it is also to identify the constituent parts of both streams so as to assess the degree to which you are successfully diverting each type of recycle-able material FROM the trash. Unless you figure out how much newspaper (for example) is going to the curb in your single-stream bin (and in your landfill-directed waste container), you won't know if that represents 10% of the overall newspaper waste leaving the building or 90%. The difference tells you a great deal about the effectiveness of your diversion efforts for that material and can guide changes to your program. Those are the key insights the credit intends to reveal.

Hope that helps,

Dan

Dan,

I have been curious and a bit frustrated by this credit and its requirements. In your experience, how much of a difference does it make to know the exact percentage of the waste that is being DIVERTED/RECYCLED? I understand why you would need to know what each type of waste is that goes to a LANDFILL, but why does it matter with the recycled side? Granted, the extra effort of sorting co-mingled recycled materials gives a neatly packaged percentage, but isn't the intent here to find out the effectiveness waste management program and where to focus efforts? How does having the percentage of all newspaper that was recycled lead to a better recommendation than would knowing the percent of the landfill waste that was newspaper? A facility could be throwing away 100% of its newspaper, but if newspaper is 1% of the landfilled waste, there are better places the facility staff could be spending its time.

It doesn't seem like it would be difficult for someone familiar with the building and its population to determine whether x pounds of a material landfilled is closer to 90% or 10% of the material that is used in the building and thereby make the appropriate determination for the changes to make in a building’s waste management plan. If it really is that hard to determine where the diverted percentage falls in the range or is likely somewhere in the middle, then I would assert that you go after it if it is a significant portion of your total LANDFILLED waste.

Is this extra effort and brain damage worth the extra knowledge?

Thanks!

Sonrisa

Hi Sonrisa,

I think you are asking all the right questions about this credit. Although almost any facility seeking EBOM can earn MRc6, its not 'easy' for anyone. Sorting through all that waste is a relatively unpleasant and time-consuming task. For many buildings, a comprehensive waste audit is really informative about diversion successes and opportunities. My experience is that most building operators have only a rough sense of the components of their waste stream, and that understanding can become outdated as tenants and/or space uses change. Understanding both the components of the diverted and non-diverted waste can actually be quite important in terms of allocating resources to improve even a very strong recycling program.

The requirement for sorting diverted waste is, as you've noted, to identify the opportunities that are not being maximized. Diverting 100lbs of newspaper per day is great if you are only generating 110lbs total, but its lousy if you're generating 1000lbs a day. A building operator can certainly guess or estimate those rates, but without auditing diverted waste, they won't know for certain. (Think of this as similar to water or energy metering - most building operators have a general idea as to how much water they use for irrigation or other end uses, but without a meter the just don't know. The waste audit is like attaching a one-time waste meter to your building.)

That being said, for some buildings the knowledge gained will indeed be marginal, and it may simply confirm what you already believed about your recycling program. For those buildings, the value inherent in confirmation (and the LEED point) may not be worth the extra time and effort. And that's exactly why the waste audit, which was formerly a mandatory prerequisite in EBv2.0, became an optional credit in EBOM. Buildings for whom the methodology required by LEED is not productive shouldn't be required to do it, and the current rating system allows for that decision.

And after all that, I will also note that sorting the diverted portion of the waste stream is, in my experience, the faster and more readily-completed portion of this undertaking. Separating cans from bottles or weighing barrels of newspaper is infinitely more pleasant than pulling recycle-ables out of the actual trash. Ugh.

So in sum, to answer your final question, I would say that the extra effort is marginal, the brain damage will largely result from smelling day-old caesar salads and chinese food in the landfill-directed waste rather than the diverted waste, and the extra knowledge gained will, although variable from building to building depending on the sophistication of your waste tracking system, likely be worth that additional marginal effort.

Sorry for the lengthy response. Waste audits fire me up!

Dan