When it comes to managing waste, until recently, most businesses had an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach. Once the garbage truck had noisily tipped the bins and driven off, the waste had ‘gone away’. The monthly bill from the waste service provider came in and it got paid. Rarely were questions asked about: How much waste are we making?; Has it been properly separated?; Were the bins full?; Did it go to appropriate licensed and safe facilities? Never were questions raised about how much of the materials in the recycling bin were actually recycled or what they got recycled into. Considering the embodied carbon in the products that were used once (or not at all) before going to waste was unheard of.
As net zero targets come into play and business grapples with traceable Environmental Social Governance (ESG) reporting to their investors, waste can no longer be ignored. Fluffy motherhood statements in environmental policies no longer cut it. Vague summaries of corporate achievements in implementing recycling in annual reports are off the table. Business stakeholders and the community are much more aware and intolerant of ‘green wash’.
Many businesses that Encycle work with aim to provide recycling in their premises. Yet, who is checking that the materials in the recycling bins in the office (for example) end up in the recycling bins in the bin store and are collected and sent to a recycling facility? Could having the shiny new colour coded bins in prominent areas actually be a form of ‘green washing’?
Without knowing how much waste your business produces (your baseline waste generation) and how much your business is diverting from landfill (your diversion rate), it’s impossible to know what impact your waste minimisation initiatives are having on your business’ carbon footprint.
Without accurate and trustworthy data, how can you set realistic targets to improve? You need to know where the waste your business generates goes to really understand how much is being recovered (recovery rate) and that you are not risking harm to the environment and people.
Whilst protecting the environment is important, so are business profits and shareholder dividends. Waste disposal costs are on the rise, however disposal costs are only the tip of the iceberg. For example, the true cost to a restaurant when it throws out food waste is significantly more than just the waste collection service; the true cost includes purchasing costs of the wasted food, labour and utility costs to prepare and cook the wasted food, labour costs to transfer the wasted food to the collection point, cleaning bins and dealing with pest management in loading docks.
The legislative and political landscape is seeing many significant changes in shifting Australia to a circular economy. If your business is not starting to engage in the principles of a circular economy that designs out waste, keeps materials at their highest and best use and regenerates natural systems, your business is at risk of being left behind. Your competitors are likely to be looking at innovative ways to avoid waste being produced in the first place and reap the economic benefits that just so happen to benefit the environment too.
The WA State government is looking to ban electronic waste (i.e. items with an electrical plug) to landfill in 2024. What impact would this have on your business? Other jurisdictions are also exploring increasingly stringent rules on treatment of waste streams, such as NSW potentially banning organic waste to landfill.
Encycle see that good directors ask themselves these questions in managing risk and cost around waste:
1. How much total waste (in tonnes) does our business produce per week?
2. What percentage of our total waste was recovered (i.e. reused, recycled, composted or sent to a waste to energy plant) in the last financial year?
3. Is our waste data verifiable and auditable?
4. Do we know where all of the waste from our business actually ends up?
5. What is our business’s media response if waste from our business is found at an unlicensed facility, illegally dumped, or becomes a pollutant?
6. What is the true cost of our business’s waste?
7. Is our competition becoming more circular and will our business get left behind because we haven’t figured out how to design out waste, keep materials to their highest and best use or regenerate natural systems?
8. How can our business effect positive change through the supply change of our products or services in designing out waste and using products with greater quantities of recycled content?
9. What materials are likely to be banned from landfill in Western Australia? How will this affect our business?
10. What is our business’s risk management plan for waste?
We at Encycle are pleased to see positive change in managing waste – in designing out waste and to work with businesses who truly want to get on board with this change. Knowing the answers to the questions above will reduce business risk, improve profitability and help protect the environment.
