Measuring And Reducing Waste Using Technology
As the world navigates towards becoming net-zero, organisations across the UK must fulfil their environmental responsibility to reach carbon neutrality. Director at sustainable waste management experts Envirovue, Alex Trenbath, shares how businesses can measure and reduce waste effectively using technology.
With businesses worldwide eager to work towards carbon neutrality and sustainable resource management taking more precedence, we’re seeing more companies looking to reduce their waste, implement circular economy approaches, and ultimately reduce their carbon footprint.
Whilst seeing this movement unfold is a positive step toward a greener future, it's putting businesses under pressure. If consumers and stakeholders who buy from these organisations don’t see actionable changes, they’ll vote with their feet.
It’s also worth noting that reducing and recycling waste is not only better from a sustainability perspective, but more often than not means a cost reduction too.
Identifying Waste And Emissions
For businesses to make these all-important changes, they must be able to measure their waste streams and understand where their carbon emissions are coming from, internally and across their supply chains. Unless these businesses working towards net-zero emissions and zero to landfill know where their waste and emissions are coming from, they can’t possibly implement any actions, processes, or innovations to reduce them.
There are many specialist consultancies and online ‘carbon calculators’ available, however, you still need coherent data to be collected on your business activities to produce figures accurately.
Where Are Industries Going Wrong?
Businesses failing to measure their waste correctly likely don’t have the tools, technology, or internal expertise to do this. Without this proficiency, collecting such a substantial amount of waste data wouldn't be economically viable. This is especially true if the organisations in question manage various sites with a range of suppliers, all with different systems (or no digital systems in place), providing the data in different formats, or not at all.
This is also true when it comes to emissions data. For example, if a large multinational organisation with thousands of suppliers providing a range of different services, from manufacturing to distribution to maintenance, is using unconnected IT systems, then where do you start to collect the relevant data to calculate the emissions relating to these activities?
With no streamlined process in place, it’s no surprise organisations often exclude specific activities in their yearly carbon neutrality statements, claiming that they’re ‘not financially viable to measure’. Unfortunately, these unstated emissions can account for over 70% of a company’s carbon footprint.
For example, it’s often straightforward for a contractor in the construction industry to collect data on and reduce emissions relating to fuel and energy consumption used on each site, as well as their direct employees’ mileage. However, collecting emissions data relating to their subcontractor's travel, materials used, and the logistics network used to transport those materials becomes harder due to financial viability.
Solving The Problem
To measure and reduce waste successfully, businesses should consider engaging with a waste management service that obtains the digital tools and expertise. By doing this, businesses can measure their total waste outputs in granular detail across all their operation sites and receive emissions data relating to key movement. Consequently, using this information and the consultation of experts, businesses can implement new processes and practices to reduce waste, increase recycling rates, reduce vehicle movement related to waste and reduce transport costs.
For example, companies may identify that there are opportunities to turn the waste types they produce into commodities rather than them being a liability (e.g. cardboard and plastics). Alongside this, organisations could reduce a large number of vehicle movements by compacting particular waste types, resulting in carbon and cost savings.
Final Thoughts
There's been a widespread change in the attitudes and purchasing decisions of consumers and organisations centred around sustainability, and waste management is a massive consideration when it comes to sustainability.
Not just from a ‘let's stop filling our oceans with plastic and dumping waste in the ground’ perspective, but from a resource management perspective and subsequently, reducing carbon emissions.
We think one of the biggest challenges at the moment for companies looking to make positive changes concerning reducing their waste or emission outputs is measuring them, particularly companies with large, complex supply chains.
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