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EBOM-2009 MRc8:Solid Waste Management—Durable Goods

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We do a good job of tracking the tons of e-waste and furniture that we reuse or recycle, but we don't do a great job of separating the durable goods out of the waste stream to know the weight or amount of durable goods we're throwing away - it all gets reported in our one landfill stream. Any suggestions?

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Alexa Stone
ecoPreserve: Building Sustainability
LEEDuser Basic Member
101 thumbs up

Wed, 05/09/2012 - 00:26

Hi Emily, can you clarify your question? by definition durable goods are just that, along with equipment such as maintenance, vehicle fleet what other items do you have left?

Wed, 05/09/2012 - 13:53

Sorry for not being clear. My issue is that we track the weight of recycled durable goods, but don't have a clear sense of the weight of the landfilled durable goods that we throw away. All of our landfill is lumped in one report (ongoing consumables, food, durable goods, etc) so figuring out the % of durable goods that we divert is proving difficult. Just wondering if others have had this problem and how to tell what % of durable goods we divert if we don't know the number of durable goods we throw away. Hope this helps.
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Dan Ackerstein
Principal
Ackerstein Sustainability, LLC
LEEDuser Expert
545 thumbs up

Wed, 05/09/2012 - 15:26

Hi Emily - This is a common question about calculating durable goods. There are two things to consider here: 1. Although X pounds of durable goods waste may be collected, some fraction may still end up in the landfill. Broken office furniture often cannot easily be recycled or reused, and therefore is landfilled. So it is not uncommon for a durable goods diversion rate to be less than 100%. 2. Noone sorts their landfill-directed waste, so noone really knows if durable goods are slipping out in that stream. That is why GBCI requires a quality control program to at least try to ensure no durable goods are getting into the waste stream untracked or uncontrolled. As I'm sure you know, this is very common on university campuses where students often have direct access to dumpsters and simply toss things in at all hours of the day/night. So ultimately, if you do recycle all the DG waste you collect, your diversion rate will be 100% - just be sure you have a sound QC effort in place to help GBCI feel confident that material isn't slipping between the cracks. Hope that helps, Dan

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