‘Waste audits’ making businesses better

Aug. 26--Twice a month, Carl Polonchak loads a van with green bins of office paper and blue bins of magazines and other "shiny paper."

Along with cardboard and other recyclable items, Polonchak drives them across town to Lancaster city's New Holland Avenue recycling center.

"It became a very easy process," he said of the system of colored bins he established at the Gilbert Architects office on North Charlotte Street several years ago.

"In architecture, we produce a lot of paper," said Polonchak, the office's information technology director.

The recycling effort began with a desire to see less of that paper go to the landfill. Gradually, the office went from having a 4-cubic-yard trash bin emptied twice a week to once weekly.

While Gilbert took it upon itself to reduce its waste, Lancaster city officials are now ramping up efforts to help other businesses do the same.

The city's Solid Waste & Recycling bureau is now offering waste audits, in which city employees will visit businesses and look in trash cans to find ways for the businesses to recycle more.

"We find that a lot of businesses are not recycling or are not doing it as well as they can," Tim Breneisen, the city's solid waste and recycling manager, said.

Businesses in the city are required to recycle, the same as city residents, Breneisen said.

Along with the bottles, cans, plastics and newsprint that residents must put in curbside recycling bins, businesses are required to recycle cardboard and office paper.

But unlike residents - nearly all of whom have contracts with the city's single hauler - there is no uniformity in city commercial waste collection.

Larger businesses, such as grocery stores or Lancaster General Hospital, have their own long-established recycling programs.

Yet, often smaller businesses do not have recycling collection, said the bureau's Cory Simo. That would require haulers to send another truck, and drive up the cost.

Keeping recyclable material out of the trash can is the goal of the commercial recycling effort, Breneisen said.

But there also is the added benefit of potentially reducing costs for businesses by cutting back on the amount of waste collected. "We want them to recycle, and the waste reduction and savings are icing on the cake," he said.

Simo said he has visited about a dozen businesses to do waste audits since April.

The effort started quietly, often with him asking people visiting the city recycling center if they were interested in him coming to their business. At each audit, there was significantly more recycling the business could be doing, he said.

He's gone to architects, travel agencies, insurance agents, churches, and a video production company.

"Everybody's waste is different. It's not like a house where everybody has the same kind of garbage," he said.

Simo said he tries to determine what is recyclable and where that recyclable material can be taken.

In addition to looking in the trash cans, Simo asks how many boxes of paper the business buys and how often the soda machine is restocked. Those answers help him determine amounts of materials used and the amounts that can be recycled in an office.

"Hopefully, we'll reduce their trash stream, increase their recycling and lower their trash costs."

Breneisen said they hope to meet with industry groups to reach larger numbers of small city businesses.

The initial emphasis is on getting paper waste recycled, Breneisen said. For an architect or engineering office, as much as 80 percent of its trash might be office paper, he said.

In the future, he hopes to reach the city's restaurants and other food businesses. Eventually, he hopes to begin a compostable food waste program.

"The main thing is getting businesses to recycle, because there is so much opportunity; people don't realize that this stuff is worth money," Breneisen said of recyclable material.

"You're keeping material out of garbage, plus you're putting this material back to work, you're creating jobs and economic activity to convert this back into a usable product. It's a win-win-win all the way around."

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