Begin by identifying who purchases food and beverages for use at the project building. This should include food outlets, vending machines and catering.
A waste audit is the perfect opportunity to verify that your battery and lamp recycling programs are working, and also to verify that no durable goods or construction waste are slipping into the ongoing consumables waste stream.
Post the audit results in the building to help occupants understand the impact of their actions. Consider publicizing information about typical recycling rates in your region to show how your building compares. Communicate a plan for a follow-up audit to gauge the building’s improvement over time.
Use the waste audit to determine whether more education about recycling procedures is needed for occupants—for example, understanding what qualifies as recyclable, and which receptacles are for which materials.
When analyzing audit results, look for missed recycling and source-reduction opportunities. Note the number of recyclables that are thrown in the trash, as well as recurring waste that could be eliminated completely. For example, if paper towels are a major component of the unrecyclable waste stream, consider installing efficient hand dryers. (See the source reduction guide in the Documentation Toolkit for tips on source reduction for individual waste types.)
Both landfill waste and recycling waste must be audited, along with any other streams.
Project teams must physically go through the garbage and recyclables to conduct the audit. Shortcuts such as extrapolating the recycling rate from generic data of similar-sized buildings or rule-of-thumb figures are not acceptable approaches. The same is true for applying overall hauler results.
Do not notify building occupants (other than the housekeeping staff) before conducting the waste audit. Advance warning could spur temporary improvement, yielding unrepresentative results. Accuracy, not a specific performance level, is what’s relevant to this credit.
This is not an expensive credit. If your project team conducts the audit itself, you may require some extra hired help to collect the sample, then sort and track the results. If you hire a waste collector to conduct the audit, however, this will entail some additional cost.
Work with the housekeeping staff to make sure they understand how to collect the materials to be sorted. Housekeeping staff should know to keep the recycling streams separate from the general garbage. They also should store the sample materials in a place where they will not be disposed of and should not throw out any of the materials collected during the sample period.