What would be the best way for a building to document their audit if they contract for single stream waste/recycling? The occupants do not sort anything – both waste and recycling go into single containers and are picked up by the hauler completely comingled. The hauler brings the load to their off-site sorting facility where everything gets pulled out that can be recycled. The management is then provided with a monthly report on what was landfilled and what was recycled. Could the average monthly recycling percentage based on the monthly reports during the 3-month performance period be applied to the waste specifically collected for the audit?
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Walter Brown
SVPJamestown Development & Construction
November 11, 2012 - 12:11 pm
Both New York City and San Francisco provide this type of Comingled (all-in) service and, as I understand, for San Francisco the law requires haulers to find a use for 100% of all materials in the waste stream including compostables. Sooo - looks like the intent of LEED has been more than met here and I have the same question as Terry above for how to manage this type of condition.
Barry Giles
Founder & CEO, LEED Fellow, BREEAM FellowBuildingWise LLC
LEEDuser Expert
338 thumbs up
November 11, 2012 - 12:35 pm
Terry and Walter, thanks for the question, yes this comes up a lot, especially when districts start co-mingle recycle. The point of the credit of a waste stream audit is to actually measure, as accurate as possible, what is in the total waste stream. While we applaud the co-mingled option, what is in the waste stream itself? While many buildings do an excellent job of recycling we all know that in fact in the waste (trash) stream there is still materials that could go into the recycle. That’s the first reason for doing the audit to point out the fact that there is more ‘action’ that could be undertaken. The second reason is to pinpoint what there is in the trash stream that we cannot recycle right now….let’s take polystyrene as an example. After doing a full count in the audit we could find that the trash stream contains 50% polystyrene. What are we going to do with it?...currently there may be no ‘recycle’ options…can we the create one?....what about finding out who is putting that quantity of polystyrene in the waste…(back when computer monitors arrived in big boxes with lots of packing, one method was to ‘suggest’ that the manufacturer took back the polystyrene blocks)…can we then suggest that different methods of packing be suggested to suppliers so WE don’t have to handle the non-recycle pieces.
The target is to get to Zero Waste…and 100% recycle.
Specifically for the MR c7 (Reuse, recycle or compost 50% of the ongoing consumables waste stream (by weight or volume), you will need the total weight of the recycled/co-mingled and percentage this against the TOTAL weight of trash and recycle leaving the building. Don't forget any weight created from batteries, compost, etc.
Oh...and happy dumpster diving!