Does your business have more than one location? How about more than 10, or more than 100? The more locations you have, the more important it is to optimize your waste efficiency to ensure that as much of your waste as possible is being diverted away from landfills and into recycling streams.
Rubicon’s mission is to end waste. It is my view that waste is one of the greatest existential crises that we are facing as a society, and with this in mind I was thrilled to be joined on a recent Rubicon® webinar by experts from two companies that are leading the charge in optimizing waste efficiency.
I, Tom Owston, Vice President of Account Management at Rubicon, had the pleasure of hosting this webinar and was joined by our great partners:
- Meredith Lindvall: Director of Waste and Recycling, Cox Enterprises
- Parker Lacy: Vice President of Facilities, Trilogy Health Services
You can watch the full webinar recording below, or keep reading for my three key takeaways from the virtual event:
Takeaway #1: The Importance of Rightsizing
The first takeaway from the webinar is the importance of rightsizing your business’s operations across all locations. One of the ways to have the biggest environmental impact is to do fewer pickups. This creates less damage on the roads, less fuel being burned, and reduces the chances of accidents occurring.
The way you create fewer pickups is by rightsizing. Parker at Trilogy noted that companies should rightsize not just from a cost standpoint but from a functionality standpoint:
“Our biggest first step was partnering with Rubicon and getting the fundamental blocking and tackling so we could start working on optimizing our waste efficiency.”
Meredith at Cox spoke of being a catalyst for zero-waste within your four walls:
“At Cox, we aim to do the most good by reducing and diverting as much material as possible within our own four walls while continuing to support our communities and finding innovative solutions for our waste streams to achieve a 90 percent diversion rate.”
Takeaway #2: Differentiate Total Cost of Ownership vs. Price
The second takeaway from the webinar is the need to differentiate total cost of ownership from price. While price is always going to be important when deciding how to optimize your business’s waste efficiency, the more locations you have, the more you need to look at total cost of ownership.
Here’s what Parker had to say from the point of view of Trilogy:
“What’s unique about Rubicon’s platform is that […] there is a synergy there that doesn’t exist in other platforms when it comes to this environment from the standpoint of how you can quickly make changes and how you can find inefficiencies.”
Parker continued:
“The operations of the sites flex so much over 36 months. They go up in occupancy, they go down, they have special events, they have holidays […] Rubicon is a great partnership for us because it allows that flex, and it allows that total cost of ownership to be lower than just a price comparison.”
Takeaway #3: Getting Facility Buy-In is Crucial
The third takeaway from the webinar is the importance of getting facility buy-in.
There is a difference between telling facility or location managers that they need to start optimizing their waste efficiency, and actually getting their buy-in on the importance of doing so. The way you do this is by meeting facility managers where they are.
In the case of Cox, Meredith noted that the company has aggressive goals to be zero waste to landfill by 2024 and carbon and water neutral by 2034. In order to meet these goals, it had to make sustainability a core part of the way that Cox does business. From a baseline of just a nine percent diversion rate in 2013, Cox hit a 75.5 percent diversion rate in 2020, and is on track to hit their targeted 80 percent diversion rate for 2021.
Meredith believes that getting facility-buy in and meeting people where they are has been crucial for Cox’s success in this area.
“We did a waste characterization and realized that so much of what we were throwing away as a business was readily recyclable. Once you have that data you have a baseline and you can set up a plan to take clear action. In one office we found that 36 percent of what we were throwing in the trash was regular paper!”
Meredith continued:
“When you have this type of information it catches your attention and you can really start towards knowing what impact you want, and knowing how to drive your employees to create that impact.”
Rubicon’s Solutions
Whether your business has one location or 1,000, Rubicon can help your company to optimize waste efficiency across your locations.
At Rubicon, we find appropriate recycling solutions for every waste stream in order to keep as much material out of landfills as possible. Our recycling experts at Rubicon work with your organization to build a cost-effective, environmentally friendly bubble wrap recycling solution to ensure you save (or even make) money and keep recyclable materials out of landfills. Rubicon’s full-service offerings cover other commercial waste streams including food waste, organics recycling, electronic and hazardous waste, and more.
To sign up for future events from or attended by Rubicon, and to look back on previous events in which we have been in attendance, take a look at Rubicon’s events page.
If you have any questions, or you’re interested in learning more about Rubicon’s sustainability offerings, please reach out to KeyAccountsNewBusiness@rubicon.com, or contact our sales team at (844) 479-1507.
Tom Owston is Vice President of Account Management at Rubicon. To stay ahead of Rubicon’s announcements of new partnerships and collaborations around the world, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, or contact us today.
