What is “Zero Waste” - And Why Should You Care?

[Richard Anthony]

What is “Zero Waste” - And Why Should You Care?

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Over the past year, many companies have begun expanding their sustainability programs to include “zero waste” efforts. But what does “zero waste” actually mean – and what place should it hold in corporate sustainability programs? By Andrew Winston

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If we’re to believe the flurry of press releases over the last year, organizations of all stripes are trying to drastically reduce the waste they send to landfills.  In the years since Subaru announced a “zero waste” facility in 2004, the pace of announcements has risen, and they’ve come from a broader range of organizations.
 
Across all sectors, waste reduction is big.  Recent stories include press releases from GM, P&G, Kraft, Sunny Delight, and Caterpillar.  Outside of the private sector, zero waste goals are now commonplace at universities (Cal State and ASU for example), communities (see this cross-EU municipality project), and even countries (Scotland has a detailed plan for getting there).  And influential stakeholders such as the investor-backed Ceres have recently made zero waste goals part of the “roadmap” to sustainability.
 
All of this activity seems to be working at the macro level.  Total Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in the U.S. is down recently for the first time, and trash giant Waste Management, seeing the writing on the landfill wall, is transitioning as quickly as possible from just hauling waste to helping companies manage recycling streams.
 
Over the last two months, I’ve spoken to a number of companies about their waste strategies.  I wanted to answer a few core questions and provide a few key examples.   I hope this helps you think about how to manage waste efforts (carefully) and how to tie them to your brand proposition (very carefully).
 

1. Why are companies doing this? (Caterpillar, Kraft, GM)

The short answer is cost savings.  Paying someone to haul away waste is, well, wasteful.  Caterpillar reports that shifting from 6 to 30 waste streams, thus increasing recycling rates to about 100% at two UK facilities, is saving $200,000.   Sunny Delight saved $2.5 million in three facilities.  A closely related second reason is efficiency.  Kraft has found its overall operations improved in facilities that had achieved zero waste goals.  Third, companies are finding they can make money by managing waste streams better…a lot of money.  Since 2007, GM has actually earned $2.5 billion in revenue from recycling.
 
Money is good, but the other reasons to pursue zero waste are likely larger in the long run. The leaders are also finding deeper value in knowing their business better and driving a disciplined approach to product design and manufacturing.  In essence, companies can use zero waste programs to drive continuous improvement.
 
Finally, companies can build brand value by demonstrating responsible stewardship of resources (the number of press releases would suggest that branding execs agree).  For example, GM played a minor, but interesting, role in the Gulf Oil spill cleanup.  The company recycled used oil booms and used the material in its new Chevy Volt (how fitting is it to squeeze oil out of a material so it can be reused in an electric car?).  The manager of GM’s waste efforts, John Bradburn, told me that GM collected enough material to provide one part for the first year of production of Volts.

2. What does zero waste mean? (Waste Management, Pepsi, GM)

As you peruse press releases and talk to companies about waste, it becomes clear very quickly that “zero waste” never actually means zero waste.  Organizations are sending no waste to the landfill, a critical distinction.  Internally, companies tend to use this far more accurate, but less catchy, phrase.
 
All waste that would normally leave a facility has to head in a few basic directions (besides paying to dump it in a landfill): 

• Reuse it in-house
• Sort it into streams that can be recycled (and sold) outside the company, or
• Incinerate it in waste-to-energy (WTE)plants.   And pretty much everyone is still burning some leftover waste.

 
Every company finds its own comfort zone on calling this process “zero.”  PepsiCo environmental exec Tim Carey tells me that the company “strives to recycle or repurpose every bit of waste” but there’s still a “tiny bit” left over for incineration.  For GM, at its 76 landfill-free facilities, the tiny bit works out to 3 percent of waste.  GM environmental manager John Bradburn told me that the volume going to WTE plants is driven mainly by two forces: (a) the economics of sending waste to WTE facilities and (b) the need to manage hazardous waste, which can often only be burned.  With transportation costs so high, and WTE plants charging tipping fees, Bradburn says, the incentive is to bring the incineration number down as far as possible.
 
A few organizations have taken a shot at defining the appropriate use of “zero”, but there’s no agreement on exact metrics yet.  Waste experts tell me that companies are following guidelines from well-respected organizations such as the EPA and the Zero Waste International Alliance, which defines “ZW” this way: “Businesses and communities that achieve over 90% diversion of waste from landfills and incinerators are considered to be successful in achieving Zero Waste, or darn close.”
 
But the real debate is not between three and ten percent incineration, but whether WTE should “count” as a sustainable option at all?  I’d welcome opinions on this one, but it seems that the answer depends on many factors.  Creating energy from waste could be a sustainability win overall, especially if the end product is inert ash instead of hazardous waste.  But the pursuit of “zero waste” as a goal, without focusing on the cost, revenue, operational, and brand benefits, can lead to some strange outcomes.  Some companies have announced “zero waste” facilities with incineration as high as 40 percent.  And as Waste Management’s Director of Green Squad, Tom Carpenter, told me, “companies sometimes ship cross country to an incinerator that may not even capture the energy.”

3. How else can we think about waste reduction? (Interface)

Is the exact diversion rate the only way of looking at this?  To demonstrate all the ways of measuring waste reduction, I spoke to Erin Meezan, the VP of Sustainability for Interface, the carpet tile manufacturer and perennial green leader.  Meezan provided me with some fascinating operational data, suggesting four angles that yield vastly different “results.”  Working with the same basic numbers, we could logically declare that…
 

• “Interface is 1% shy of zero waste”.   This number was reported last year in GreenBiz, based on the following calculation: Interface buys 400 million pounds of raw material, and only sends 3.4 million pounds to the landfill.  As Meezan says, “the math is right, but it’s an apples and oranges comparison.”
• Waste to landfill is down 77%.  The company sent 15 million pounds to a landfill in 1996, and 3.4 million pounds in 2009.
• Total waste disposal is down 19%.  Interface sent a combined 16 million pounds to landfill and to WTE in 1996, compared with 13 million pounds to both in 2009.
• Interface keeps seven times more waste out of the landfill than it puts in. Through its ReEntry program, Interface captured and recycled 25 million pounds of post-consumer carpet in 2009 (thus 7 times the now-familiar 3.4 million pounds sent to landfill).

 
All of these measurements are valid, but demonstrate the danger of simplifying too much.  I’m always partial to leveraging a value-chain perspective, so the last number from Interface may be the best.  The lifecycle footprint matters much more than a given facility’s exact diversion rate.  And is a company really “zero waste” if it’s not looking at the full chain and closing all possible loops?
 
All that said, I’m still a fan of zero waste goals.  The reality is that even without perfect, technically accurate words, they do drive performance and give plant managers, division leaders, and other execs something tangible to grab onto.  A zero goal operationalizes sustainability and provides a disciplined way of thinking about the business.
 
To make it real for employees, Interface developed a program called QUEST (Quality Using Employee Suggestions and Teamwork).  One of the communication tools execs used was a simple poster series that put a value on various forms of waste.  An off-quality or damaged carpet tile: $4.  A pound of tangled yarn: $3.  Waste edge trim from a roll of carpet: $50.  The waste-reducing innovations and discipline these engagement tools drove: Priceless.
 

Final note and Resources

Clearly, going to “zero” is more complicated than it first appears.  Companies will need to look past their own operations and consider the full value-chain impacts.  The tools for doing this are still evolving, but starting with your own operations is certainly a good first step.  For more info, check out the two main organizations dedicated to this topic, Zero Waste Alliance and Zero Waste International Alliance.

Richard Anthony
3891 Kendall Street
San Diego, CA 92109
richardanthonyassociates.com
rican...@aol.com

 

Join us for the 35th Annual CRRA Conference & Tradeshow
“Zero Waste: Riding the Wave to Sustainability”
San Diego, California, July 31- August 3, 2011
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