24 Jun How Businesses Can Be a Part of Austin’s Zero Waste Goals

What do dumpster diving, responsibilities, and online dating have in common? Panelists at the Austin Zero Waste 101 Workshop on Thursday, June 18th, revealed that these three things are all tools for businesses to make Zero Waste a realistic goal for Austin.

Zero Waste is a global ideal with strong local motivations; Austin has set a goal of being Zero Waste, or diverting 90 percent of trash (or more) from landfills, by 2040. But businesses are struggling with how to get involved with this goal, and stumbling upon many obstacles along the way.

In some cases, businesses’ financial gains are the results of, and oftentimes motivation to, recycle. In other cases, it costs more to recycle than to not, as it did for Ted Hibler, general manager at the AT&T Conference Center. “But it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

“‘Waste not, want not,’ is an American ethic,” Sustainability Consultant Tom Wright said. “So the fact that we’ve become a wasteful society is actually a recent phenomenon.” Now that we have reached a point of straining the environment, cities around the nation are starting to jump on board to be more green and sustainable, and businesses are making it possible.

According to the Zero Waste International Alliance, Zero Waste is “a goal that is ethical, economical, efficient and visionary, to guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate sustainable natural cycles where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use.”

Three panelists Thursday morning spoke about the tools businesses can use to help Austin go Zero Waste. Each had a unique perspective in the business world of waste management, but all three pointed out the many benefits that come from recycling.

It’s not a matter of if we take determined steps to recycle, it’s when, Hilber said.

Analyzing data to implement change: with Judi Gregory

Judi Gregory, President of Go2Zero Strategies, said that one of the biggest steps a business can take to being Zero Waste is “getting down and dirty.”

“I can guarantee you that no business is going to get to Zero Waste if they haven’t gotten knee deep into what’s going into those trashcans,” Gregory said. “Knowing what goes into the trash is the first step to keeping it out.”

It is nearly impossible for a business to make positive changes in increasing their recycling rate if they do not know what mistakes they have made in the past. Trash audits, or “glorified dumpster diving” as Gregory called it, give businesses the statistics and information they need to increase their recycling and decrease their trash output.

“It’s really important that we’re not just doing it once,” she said, “but that we’re continually looking to make change by looking in those dumpsters.”

Trash audits help identify what’s in the trash, where it came from, and how to eliminate it from the trash through recycling, reusing or composting. They also help to provide businesses with ways to save money.

“Businesses pay for everything that goes into that trashcan. So if we can keep it out of the trashcan, then we can eliminate the cost associated with it,” Gregory said.

An important part of making progress toward a goal is establishing the goal, Gregory said, so figuring out if the business’ objective is financial or environmental is what will be the driving force in trash auditing and recycling improvements.

“At the end of it, you want to make sure that you are getting results and information that meet the objective of why you’re doing this,” she said.

What ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’ means for Zero Waste: with Robin Schneider

In a city that is working towards Zero Waste but exists in a commodity world, businesses have the most influence. It is up to businesses to write recycling into contracts, and to be active leaders in waste management legislation.

“What we have now are products designed for the dump,” said Robin Schneider, executive director of Texas Campaign for the Environment. These products are often manufactured with toxic materials, and when these use-and-discard materials are thrown out, the toxins they were produced with will be toxins that must be property disposed of.

This puts a burden on local governments to take additional measures, and use more funds, to properly dispose of the hazardous materials. And these toxic products — like batteries, computers and cellphones — are in high demand, high supply and are quickly discarded.

“Even if the local governments could afford to deal with all that product waste,” Schneider said, “they can’t change how the products are designed.”

Schneider proposed an increase in producer takeback responsibility as a solution to increasing recycling and changing product design. Producer takeback responsibility, she said, is “shifting responsibility upstream towards the producer and away from municipalities who are dealing with the waste.”

This type of recycling takes weight off of local governments and puts the responsibility and the effort in the hands of the producer. The producer then might find it in its best interest to change the design of the product to be recyclable (because toxic waste is more expensive to dispose of), or create a more efficient discarding system.

A number of states have passed producer responsibility measures for at least one product, Schneider said. Texas was the fourth state with an e-waste takeback law in effect, first with computers in 2007, then with televisions in 2011.

So how did Texas, a state that no one has ever called environmentally-progressive, manage to be at the forefront of e-waste takeback laws? Protests, meetings, demonstrations and community letters to two companies with strong local roots, Dell and HP, led to their support in producer takeback responsibility legislation.

“It had to start with getting those companies, that otherwise might have opposed the bill, on board,” Schneider said. Dell and HP supported the legislation, and provided some recycling opportunities, which in turn has opened doors for other businesses to recycle.

Texas still has a ways to go. Schneider said the keys to increasing recycling are to have performance targets, easy-access collection points, and disposal bans.

Businesses have strong influences in recycling, and should use their weight in the production world to drive Austin to its Zero Waste goal. Some of the ways that they can do that is by writing producer takeback into their contracts with companies, buying from lenders who participate in a recycling program, or buying from lenders who collect or recycle products when new items are delivered.

“The opportunities for business recycling have greatly expanded as this issue has taken off,” Schneider said, and as the recycling ball starts rolling, it will gain momentum and will help lead the way to Zero Waste.

Continuing the cycle through Austin Materials Marketplace: with Daniel Keisner

There are materials and products that do not need to be broken down to be recycled; that’s where the nonprofit Austin Materials Marketplace comes in. There’s the old saying: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” and with Austin Materials Marketplace that rings true.

Like online dating for businesses, they enter their discarded materials into an online database, and through an evaluation process by AMM, they’re matched up with another business that could use the materials.

“It’s really about creating an ecosystem of givers and takers, and making sure we have takers for all the materials that are available,” AMM Program Manager Daniel Kietzer said.

“If there are no matches within our network, that really helps us inform our recruitment strategy and get out there and bring in more companies that can take the sorts of materials that we have.”

Numerous benefits come from using this closed-loop system. Financially, businesses on the discarding end save disposal costs, and receiving businesses buy the materials they need at significantly reduced costs. Greenhouse gas emissions associated with production and disposal are reduced. And local economic development increases with entrepreneurship, which will increase as more opportunities for business are made possible by cheaper material prices.

“At the end of the day, what we do has to make business-sense,” Kietzer said, recognizing that incentives are a driving force to making change. And businesses are quickly getting in on the benefits.

“We’ve moved about 4,000 pounds of materials through the program,” he said. “We have over 80 active businesses and organizations right now, and that number is usually growing by one or two each day.”

The organization has created more than $33,000 in disposal savings and value creation, he said. As more businesses join AMM, the match-up process will become easier, the cycle will be more efficient and the savings will continue to increase.

“There’s so much potential for folks to come in and start new small businesses with these materials,” Kietzer said. “I think that’s really where our program shines– is helping to inspire the entrepreneur community to do things with waste materials.”