Sustainability and KenBay: The Zero Landfill Initiative

What Is the Zero Landfill Initiative?

The Zero Landfill Initiative is a comprehensive attempt by local and international nonprofit organizations to turn landfill waste materials into sustainable energy. This initiative is designed to help facilitate businesses, communities, and international enterprises to reclaim landfill space and redirect these areas toward creating more sustainable work and living spaces. Resource waste material recovery is modeled on the worldwide effort to provide the highest standard of living for countries and communities grappling with their volume of waste production and landfill concerns.

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It’s Time to Take Another Look at Your Waste Products

Evaluate your waste products today!When was the last time you conducted a waste audit for your business? 3 years ago? 5? Maybe, never? If that’s the case, it’s time to take another look at your waste products. Every business creates waste, that’s almost a certainty, but what is done with it, where it’s sent, and how much time, money, and resources are devoted to it can vary dramatically. All businesses handle waste management in different ways. But, the businesses that manage their waste most successfully all have one thing in common. They aren’t complacent, they aren’t stagnant, they don’t continue to do the same things they’ve done for years and years.

Rather, they examine their waste products and processes with regularity. They also take a strategic approach to waste management. They examine and decide in advance how waste products will be handled, before their waste lands in a landfill!

Luckily, you can do the same for your business. If you haven’t ever evaluated your waste management processes, now is the time! Here are a few things you should consider:

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

It may seem simple, but many businesses often forget that they can ease the burden of waste management by simply reducing the amount of waste their business creates. There are plenty of ways to reduce waste products in businesses that you should consider.

Can you recycle some of your waste? Or, can you donate excess material instead of throwing it away? Can you purchase materials in bulk to reduce packaging waste? Is it more cost effective to send your waste to a Waste to Energy plant than a landfill? We all know that reducing, reusing, and recycling are great ways to help the environment. But, in businesses, these steps can also save valuable time, resources, and ultimately money.

Evaluate Your Sources of Waste Repeatedly

If you create an effective waste management strategy, your business won’t just reduce costs associated with waste management. If fact, you might even transform manufacturing waste into profits. However, to do so, you first need to create an effective waste management plan. Then, you need to evaluate it, along with you sources of waste, repeatedly. At the start of every quarter, set aside time to take a look at the waste products in your business. Then, look for new ways to improve your waste management strategies.

Manage Your Waste Products with KenBay

We know that waste management can be a burden. But, with KenBay, you’ll have the tools you need to help make the job a little easier. The next time you evaluate your waste products and waste management strategy, consider integrating one of our industrial trash compactors into your processes.

Trash compactors like KenBay’s RotoPac are ideal waste management products for industrial settings. They allow companies to reduce the volume of their trash at a ratio of six to one. The RotoPac can handle all kinds of waste from food to recyclables, and even solid hazardous waste. Because trash compactors will reduce the weight and size of your waste, they are a great way to cut down your waste removal costs and improve the efficiency of waste management.

Don’t let something like a waste get in the way of your business operations. If you’re interested in trash compactors or finding a committed consultant to help you reduce your waste, call KenBay. We can tell you more about our services, no matter what industry you’re in, or how much waste you are creating!

Photo credit: Getty Images / humbak

5 of the Best Ways Waste is Converted into Renewable Energy

Renewable energy can come from a wide variety of wasteUsing renewable energy is a hot topic in the waste management industry, but it’s one that many people know less about than they think. Sure, we all recognize the most common renewable energy sources, like solar power and wind energy. But, there are many other types of renewable energy that aren’t quite as common knowledge. Did you know that sewage waste is now being used to heat and cool buildings? Or, that wasted food is used to generate electricity? Our waste has increasingly become a valuable way to replace non-renewable energy sources. Here are a few surprising examples:

1. Biomass

Biomass, organic materials like scrap lumber, forest debris, crops, and manure, can be used as fuel to create electricity or other forms of power. This type of waste, which generally comes from demolition, construction, or farming practices, can be burned to create heat. In biomass power plants, this heat is harnessed and used to heat industries and homes, or it is used to produce steam. The steam from burning biomass fuel is used to run turbines to make electricity.

2. Sewage

There is a near constant stream of warm sewage that comes from the biomatter, dishwashers, showers, and industrial processes that produce hot water and send it down the drain. Researchers in China have found ways to capture this heat and use it to regulate temperature inside buildings. In Philadelphia, this technology has been installed at the Southeast Wastewater Treatment Plant. Using only sewage and wastewater, a 20,000 square foot compressor building at the plant is fully heated and cooled by the system.  

3. Landfill Gas

The life cycle of your garbage doesn’t end when it’s dumped at the landfill. Instead, once there, the decomposition of solid waste begins to produce a byproduct that can be used in surprising ways. Methane gas, a by-product of garbage decomposition, is collected at landfills and used as thermal energy, to generate electricity, or to do both at the same time. Landfill gas is also being used as an alternative to fossil fuels like natural gas.

4. Waste Heat

Major data centers, like IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory, use water to cool down its servers. Once the water has done its job, these centers are left with hot water that is often treated as waste heat. Now, instead of disposing of this waste, it is being used to heat nearby homes. Much like hot sewage is used to warm buildings, other forms of waste heat, like that produced when cooling machinery, can be used to generate alternative heating and cooling systems.  

5. Food Waste

Heartland Biogas Project in northern Colorado is just one example of an organization that is finding ways to use food waste to create energy. They, like many others, collect millions of gallons of food waste and combine it with anaerobic digesters. These digesters are bacteria that break down the waste. In the process, they give off methane. This methane is a powerful gas used to generate electricity and other forms of renewable energy.

How KenBay Can Help You Manage Your Waste

Whether or not your business produces waste that can be used as a renewable energy source, we know waste management can be a burden. Because trash compactors will reduce the weight and size of your waste, they are a great way to cut down your waste removal costs and improve the efficiency of waste management.

Trash compactors like KenBay’s RotoPac are ideal for industrial settings, and allow companies to reduce the volume of their trash at a ratio of six to one. The RotoPac can handle all kinds of waste from food to recyclables, and even solid hazardous waste.

Don’t let something like a waste get in the way of your business operations. If you’re interested in trash compactors or finding a committed consultant to help you reduce your waste, call KenBay. We can tell you more about our services, no matter what industry you’re in, or how much waste you are creating!

Photo credit: Getty Images / NicoElNino

3 Surprising Ways Landfill Gas Can Be Put to Good Use

landfill gas can be used to create energySo, you throw away your garbage, it’s picked up by a waste management company, and then it’s delivered to a landfill where it sits to rot into eternity, right? Wrong. Allow us to introduce you to landfill gas. The life cycle of your garbage doesn’t end when it’s dumped at the landfill. Instead, once there, the decomposition of solid waste begins to produce methane gas. What’s methane gas? A colorless, odorless, gas that is all around you. It’s also a by-product of garbage decomposition. And, it can be put to use in surprising ways.

Why is this important? Because, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “[c]onverting LFG to energy offsets the need for non-renewable resources such as coal and oil, and reduces emissions of air pollutants that contribute to local smog and acid rain.” And, that’s something we can all appreciate.

How Landfill Gas is Used

Methane, also known as landfill gas, can be captured in landfills and converted into a useable energy source. Instead of vanishing into the air,  a system of wells, blowers, or vacuums collect landfill gas and take it to a processing facility. Depending on the facility the landfill gas is delivered to, it will be put to use in different ways. Here are a few of them:

1. Electricity Generation

In the United States, most captured landfill gas (about 75%) is used to generate electricity. The landfill gas to electricity process starts deep inside the pile of waste. To collect the gas, a vacuum-like blower captures it from the center of the garbage heap. After that, the gas is transported through a pipework system from the garbage heap to a processing facility, where it is transformed into electrical energy. Typically, the electricity created at landfills is used on-site, but it is also sold to the grid for general use.

2. Direct Use as Thermal Energy

Landfill gas is also used to offset, or replace, the use of other types of fuel. Instead of natural gas, coal, or fuel oil, landfill gas can be used as thermal energy. This fuel is utilized in boilers, dryers, kilns, greenhouses, and other machines that rely on thermal energy. Landfill gas can be used to fire pottery and glass, heat water for aquaculture (fish farming), and warm greenhouses. Other industries that currently use landfill gas include auto manufacturing, chemical production, food processing, pharmaceuticals, cement and brick manufacturing, wastewater treatment, consumer electronics and products, paper and steel production, and prisons and hospitals.

3. Cogeneration

Not only is landfill gas used to generate electricity or thermal energy, sometimes it is used to produce both! Because this process generates two types of energy at once, it is aptly called cogeneration. In this process, landfill gas is used in engines and turbines to produce both heat and power, typically in the form of hot water or steam.

4. Alternative Fuels

Using landfill gas as an alternative fuel is one of the newest ways it is being put to use. Because landfill gas is produced all-day, every day, and will continue to be produced for as long as we have decomposing garbage, it is often viewed as a renewable energy source to be used in place of fossil fuels. Just one example, landfill gas can be used as the equivalent of natural gas, a nonrenewable energy source that will one day run out.

How KenBay Can Help You Manage Your Waste

Whether your business has made the switch to zero waste, or it contributes to the production of landfill gas, we know waste management can be a burden. Because trash compactors will reduce the weight and size of your waste, they are a great way to cut down your waste removal costs and improve the efficiency of waste management.

Trash compactors like KenBay’s RotoPac are ideal for industrial settings, and allow companies to reduce the volume of their trash at a ratio of six to one. The RotoPac can handle all kinds of waste from food to recyclables, and even solid hazardous waste.

Don’t let something like a waste get in the way of your business operations.  If you’re interested in trash compactors or finding a committed consultant to help you reduce your waste, call KenBay. We can tell you more about our services, no matter what industry you’re in, or how much waste you are creating!

What Percentage of Your Logistics Costs Come from Waste?

Logistics Costs

If you are producing multiple tons of waste a week, logistics costs can start to pile up quickly. Landfills are filling up and many of them are even closing, leading to even higher logistics costs associated with waste because companies are left to ship it farther distances. When you are already paying for other streams of shipping throughout your business processes, it makes sense to spend less on your waste than you do, say, on shipping products to your customers.  If you have yet to consider how much you are actually paying in logistics costs when it comes to waste management, it’s time to crunch some numbers and get those costs down.

Waste Management

When it comes to lowering company-wide logistics costs, waste management is a great place to start. Many new business owners don’t consider that waste management is a thing to take seriously until they get that first waste removal bill. There are various streams of waste to consider when doing a waste management audit, and not just those associated with trash. You can also consider other areas of sustainability like energy and water use. Are there other valuable resources that are not being monitored and therefore producing waste besides the actual materials you are sending to the landfill?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Corporate responsibility necessitates that you manage your waste wisely by recycling and disposing of things like hazardous waste properly. There are many ways to reduce waste coming from your facility, and they all start with a proper audit of all your processes and the waste they produce. By auditing your waste consistently for a designated period you will discover where there are unnecessary or avoidable waste streams and can figure out where to move from there to reduce them. One waste stream you can almost always reduce is packaging. Consider your purchasing practices and how you might order things in a way that cuts down on packaging waste. Packaging can come in many forms from cardboard to shrink wrap and ends up as both trash and recycling.

Furthermore, there are many things that are determined waste that can be useful as opposed to discarded. Things like manilla envelopes and plastic containers can be easily stored for second use. There are also many options to sell used goods to other companies who can use or recycle them, creating a passive income stream where you would have been dishing out in logistics costs.  

Invest in a Commercial Trash Compactor

Are you looking to improve the sustainability of your business, as well as the safety of your workplace? Commercial trash compactors are the absolute best bet for achieving both of these goals. With many different sizes and specialities, there are commercial trash compactors for every purpose waiting to prove their return on investment. Not only can you improve the sustainability of your own company, but a commercial trash compactor will help you reduce the volume of waste that you are sending to your local landfill.

For more information about how the manage your waste in such a way that you will reduce logistics costs throughout your company, call KenBay.

   

10 Easy Ways to Save With Cardboard Recycling

Cardboard RecyclingEvery year there are 400 million tons of paper and cardboard products created worldwide, and recycling just one ton of that material can save as many as 31 trees from being cut down. About 50% of recycled paper comes from industry and business, making room for a huge market of cardboard recycling services within the waste management field. Through the sorting, compacting, baling, shredding, washing, bleaching, pressing and re-rolling process that takes place when cardboard is recycled, it’s no surprise that recycling centers love to reward businesses with cardboard recycling trash compactors.

10 Ways to Save When You Practice Cardboard Recycling

  1. Save the Trees!
    With dwindling forests around the world, especially in those prized tropical and developing countries like the infamous Borneo, recycling and using recycled products should become a practice we all partake in.
  2. Corporate Social Responsibility
    Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming a field all its own as companies realize that part of creating a lifestyle that attracts both talent and investment is the good deeds people are longing to do. A commitment to something like cardboard recycling sets the stage for yet more good works.
  3. Relieve Overflowing Landfills
    Every ton of paper recycled saves about 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space, significantly reducing the amount of waste we send there each year.
  4. Cardboard is the Biggest
    Cardboard recycling is so important because it is the largest form of waste created by business each year, and accounts for about 30 million tons of landfill waste annually.
  5. Improve Productivity With a Trash Compactor
    A stainless steel trash compactor is an easy investment to make if you’re looking to improve your cardboard recycling practices. They will allow your employees to focus more on their tasks at hand than managing waste removal.
  6. Save on Removal
    A trash compactor will decrease the volume of waste you create at a rate of six to one, meaning each load you have hauled away will contain more waste.
  7. Cut Labor Costs
    With a trash compactor, you can eliminate a large portion of someone’s responsibilities, making your workplace more efficient and either cutting down on overtime hours or even trimming down staff as your dial in your workflows.
  8. Create Income
    If you are selling enough cardboard recycling back to the recycling companies, you can not only cover your hauling costs, but you can actually earn money doing it.
  9. Reduce Hazards
    Hazards are dangerous and can end up being costly if the wrong thing happens. Efficient cardboard recycling reduces risk by ensuring that there aren’t constantly big piles of boxes sitting around that could potentially start a fire.
  10. Improve Your Workplace Environment
    Proper waste management practices like cardboard recycling can be central to creating a clean and welcoming work environment that is bound to cut down on your turnover rates. Investing in your space can save you a lot of money on hiring and training in the long run.

When it comes to waste management, a small investment in something like a trash compactor to improve your cardboard recycling can show you big returns, and quickly. Not only are you bound to save face, money, and time, but your employees will be prouder of where they work, and more excited about being there. For more information on improving and upgrading the way you handle waste, call KenBay!