By Michael Arny, President, Leonardo Academy

Building managers find that effective recycling programs reduce waste management costs. Strong recycling programs also advance sustainability by reducing the need for new resources and the environmental impacts of landfills. Recycling turns the ‘waste’ stream into a resource stream than can be mined for materials.

Recycling services, the prices paid for recycled materials, and the demand for recycled materials are growing. Facility mangers can take advantage of the continually evolving recycling market by reducing waste disposal costs through recycling and by getting paid for recyclable materials.

There are widespread recycling markets for paper, cardboard materials, HDPE & PET plastics, aluminum and steel cans, and glass.  For example, the May 2006 prices in Wisconsin were $1,800 per ton baled aluminum and $80 per ton for corrugated cardboard.  Other growing recycled material markets include bricks, carpet, latex paint, oil, wastewood products, computer scrap, rubber, and textiles. 

Sustainable building operation plans require effective waste management strategies because buildings create a large amount of waste through their operation and use. These strategies begin with source reduction because materials that are not brought into the building cannot become waste. Minimizing packaging materials for items brought into the building is an important step towards source reduction. Although reduction is the most important form of waste management, recycling contributes to business sustainability by minimizing waste that is landfilled or incinerated, reducing the need for virgin materials, and reduces the environmental impacts and costs of waste disposal.

Facility mangers can help increase the markets for recycled materials by giving purchasing preference to products that contain recycled materials.  The three arrowed recycling symbol represents collecting, remanufacturing, and purchasing, which completes the recycling loop and creates market development.  Along with having a recycling program, businesses should incorporate the purchase of products containing recycled materials into their purchasing plans.  This achieves the double benefit of reducing the environmental impacts of purchased products and fosters the growth of recycling markets.

U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Existing Buildings Rating System (LEED-EB) provides a valuable framework for facility managers to adopt recycling programs at their facilities.  LEED-EB’s Materials and Resources category is geared at reducing the quantity of building waste.  Materials and Resources Prerequisite 1 requires facilities to conduct a waste stream audit.  The audit, conducted over a representative time period, involves identifying what is in the waste stream.  The amounts of waste are recorded in weight or volume metrics and allow facility managers to determine the amount of waste on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis.  The audit identifies what is working in the recycling program and what additional materials can be removed from the waste stream for recycling. This valuable information guides the ongoing improvement of the source reduction and recycling program.

The LEED-EB framework includes another prerequisite that requires sufficient building space be allocated for gathering and storing materials for recycling.  These spaces should be easily accessible and effectively serve the entire building. This LEED-EB prerequisite requires that bins be included for at least paper, glass, plastics, cardboard, and metals.  Equipment such as can crushers and cardboard balers can be used to minimize space allocated for recycling storage

This edition of Managing Green has a case study of the recycling program at the National Geographic Society Headquarter Complex.  This program demonstrates the effective use of the LEED-EB framework for implementing an effective building waste management and recycling program.

Please contact me at michaelarny@leonardoacademy.org if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about waste management and recycling or if you have suggestions about other facility management issues you would like to see addressed in my future articles in Managing Green.

Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions:
Michael Arny, President, Leonardo Academy
michaelarny@leonardoacademy.org

About the Author:
Michael Arny is frequently called the "Father of LEED-EB." He founded the Leonardo Academy in 1997 and has guided the continued growth and accelerating impact of this organization. He has worked on energy and environmental issues his entire career. After earning a BS and MS in mechanical engineering and a BA in Psychology and Russian language at the University of Wisconsin, Michael was on the Wisconsin Public Service Commission staff for 14 years. He was the chair of the State of Wisconsin committee that developed the State of Wisconsin Greenhouse Gas emissions inventory; emission reduction cost analysis and the economic benefits analysis for emissions reductions. He is a registered professional engineer in the State of Wisconsin and a LEED® Accredited Professional, was the Chair of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) Committee from 2001-2005 and continues to serve on this committee.