Deciphering Your Organization's Waste Reduction Strategy

In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took initial steps in studying how an organization's waste reduction strategy can help in carbon emissions abatement, which can be possible through initiatives like waste reduction and recycling. This conclusion would therefore have consequent implications to the savings in the operations of organizations, as waste reduction is reviewed throughout the product lifecylce.

EPA's findings pertaining to the waste reduction strategy are quite surprising. EPA also finds that recycling construction debris alone could actually curtail over 150 million metric tons of carbon emissions, which can be as big as the entire carbon footprint of North Carolina. The same study arrived at a conclusion that it is important to increase the lifespan of products that are used and produced by organizations as an essential part of an effective waste reduction strategy.

An initiative by the Environmental Protection Agency demonstrates how a defined waste reduction strategy can help reduce costs in operations for a given business. The study suggests that carbon emission abatement from waste reduction and recycling can be significant. The EPA study in 2009 looked at emissions across an entire lifecycle in order to come up with these conclusions.

More and more environmentally conscious observers are pushing for the United States to adopt responsibility laws, ensuring that an individual organization's waste reduction strategy is anchored securely. In doing so, producers of supplies would be responsible with their products not just during the production but also extending up to the disposal.

An organization's waste reduction strategy needs to be integrated in the lifecycle analysis of every product. The disposal of waste results in dedicated costs for the organization and puts a sometimes unnecessary imposition upon municipalities and jurisdictions.

In any given developed society, a considerable GHG emissions is attributed from excess waste generation. Methane is one of the byproducts of decomposition. While most attention is paid to the first two emissions scopes, more attention will be paid over the years ahead to the third scope, including supply-chain and afterlife product handling.

The EPA suggests that procurement, production, delivery and disposal of goods and services by Americans account for 42% of the entire greenhouse gas emissions footprint for the nation as a whole. This includes emissions through land use, food and product production throughout a lifecycle.

Every organization should be aware of the size of its entire carbon footprint and should thus be in possession of information relating to an entire supply chain and waste reduction strategy. Wal-Mart has drawn attention to the necessity of curtailing emissions from the supply chain when it took action in involving its suppliers from the entire world to declare their policies on carbon management.

A waste reduction strategy is an integral part of the company's push for sustainability. Businesses need to achieve waste reduction as close to zero materials sent to landfill as possible, therefore aiming to promote the use of biodegradable products.