100% recycling rate claims

Yancy:
You may be more concerned about ultra accuracy here than most. Unless haulers and recycling facilities are operating with vastly different reporting methods around the county for the amount picked up and verified for recycling diversion, you might be making a provision that perhaps others are not.

For example in LEED-NC v2.2, the Letter Templates simply require the total weight figure provided by the hauler. I have not heard of a recycling vendor knocking down the rate from the actual weight hauled for diversion for a dedicated separated load due to any inefficiency.

Conversely, when a load of separated waste to be recycled is not sorted properly and is contaminated with another material, I have seen haulers who just head straight to the landfill with it and it earns zero diversion despite the fact that the majority of it could have been recycled.

Another indicator that my interpretation may be in line with GBCI’s intent on this issue comes from the LEED-NC v3 Credit Forms. The internal calculator in MRc2 is rounding up or down within half a ton for the comingled loads option suggesting perhaps that we simply make a reasonable effort to get these figures as close as we can for reporting purposes.

On the other end of the spectrum, I know of an occupant waste recycling company who picks up single-stream waste and recycling. They will not provide actual recycling diversion rates for the waste. Instead, they simply attribute an accounting estimate of diverted material to the building based on either the occupancy or the square footage and they input an estimated participation rate of their own making. It is not even based upon actual weights of sorted material. This to me is a case of fraudulent reporting for LEED-EB purposes. We are stuck with this vendor on a Texas project and simply won’t participate under these terms. As a result, we can’t pursue that credit for our owner, nor deliver any metrics to management for annual improvement purposes.
- Valerie

Valerie,

We are having the same problem with a LEED EB project where the recycling company claims comingling, but will not provide recycling rates or even a facility tour, which leads us to question their practices. The owner chose this company based on price 10 years ago. We're also having difficulty communicating the recycling policy to the housekeeping staff ("this trash can goes into this dumpster, this recycling bin goes into this dumpster") - aside from the Sustainable Purchasing Policy, this is the credit that causes the most confusion with the building occupants.

Many projects here in Pgh are using the single container- sort off site approach. The last one I did submitted hopelessly inaccurate weight/content slips and resisted all my efforts to get them to document for me where the sorted items go and how they estimate whats in a mixed load. I have visited amore organized sorting facility and watched actual sorting activity. Believe me this is not a task suited to accuracy. Anyone who claims they took a 30 yd box from a jobsite during mid-construction, full of everything incl kitchen sink, and diverted 100% is just plain lying. What is happening is all the GC's are saying "look I can pay $500 a load, regurgitate the paper trail to the architect and voila, MR2 is done!" LEED needs to crack down on this and hold this process to some higher standards. I for one hate to enter bogus data.

When should the Waste Management Plan be uploaded?

Upload it when submitting the credit for construction review.