Office buildings, schools, stores, hotels, restaurants and other commercial and institutional buildings generate significant amounts of materials and waste. Here are tools and resources to help facility managers, building owners, tenants and other stakeholders improve waste management in their buildings, reduce costs and enhance sustainability.
Until recently, you might not have paid much attention to the waste your organization produces. Many organizations are content simply to establish a system for removing trash. Increasingly, greater attention is being paid to waste management, and pro-active organizations are seeing the benefits of establishing a waste reduction program.
- Save Money – increasing recycling can cut your disposal costs and improve your bottom line.
- Knowledge is power – By understanding the amount and types of wastes your organization produces, you’re better positioned to find ways to reduce hauling costs and negotiate for waste and recycling services that actually fit your needs.
- Streamline reporting and information sharing – Tracking your waste management activities in one platform and using a standard set of metrics, makes it easier to share and report information with stakeholders.
- Enhance sustainability – Managing waste, water, and energy more efficiently are core components of sustainability. Improving your organization’s sustainability can boost your corporate image, attract quality tenants to your properties and positively engage employees.
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions – Waste prevention and recycling offer significant potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
- Conserve resources – Reuse and recycling conserves natural resources including trees, metals and water.
Materials and wastes offer an often overlooked opportunity to improve an organization’s sustainability, prevent greenhouse gas emissions and reduce costs. The first step is tracking the amount of wastes your organization generates, for as the old adage goes, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Tracking your waste and recycling provides the key foundation for a successful waste reduction program.
ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager® is a free, easy to use, online tool for tracking waste, energy and water data over time. Use it to benchmark the performance of one building or a whole portfolio of buildings, all in a secure online environment. Portfolio Manager offers a consistent set of metrics for assessing your waste management activities.
Check out the Portfolio Manager quick start guide and the ENERGY STAR training site to learn how to use Portfolio Manager.
Alternatively, organizations that sign up as a partner in WasteWise, the Food Recovery Challenge or the Federal Green Challenge can use the Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) Data Management System hosted in Re-TRAC Connect. Through the SMM Data Management System, partners can track and report to EPA their annual waste management and green purchasing activities, set annual goals and apply for recognition.
To read the full story, visit https://www.epa.gov/smm/managing-and-reducing-wastes-guide-commercial-buildings.