Should I conduct a basic waste review? Pt 2
Below, we’ve distilled our audit process into just a few easy to follow steps that you can use to find savings at one or more of the locations in your portfolio. Let’s go over when and how you should conduct a review.
But first, find out for sure if you’re overspending. You can know for sure whether you’re overspending in two minutes by taking this quiz. It’s the quickest, fastest way to find out if you’re overspending.
90% of companies are overspending on waste, so it’s likely you’re one of them.
Conduct a Basic Waste Review when you’re overspending.
How many of these items in the list below has happened at one of your locations in the past six months?
Your hauler repeatedly misses pick-ups
Hauler prices rise more than twice a year
Your hauler is impossible to get a hold of
These are all signs that something is wrong.
Sure, you can keep going with the status quo, but at what cost? Consider all the costs involved - emotional and time, as well as financial. Does your staff like spending 45 minutes on hold to resolve a disposal issue? Can you afford price hikes over the term of your contract? Is it worth it to continue having these problems or ones like them?
You can save 10-30% on your waste and recycling expenses!
If you're like most people, you probably suspect you're paying too much for waste and recycling services.
But you don't have the time or the expertise to properly and thoroughly review your waste expenses.
The Waste Review Blueprint will show you how to review your waste expenses quickly and efficiently. We break down the review process our team has honed over the past 18 years - the same process that's repeatedly found 10-30% reduction of waste expenses for our clients.
How much savings could you be sitting on?
Complete an audit if you want to save.
90% of companies are sitting on waste expense savings, so there’s a good chance you’re one of them. If you haven’t thoroughly reviewed your waste expenses, contracts, and processes in the past year, you likely have some savings opportunities available to you.
To complete a review you’ll need to:
Know what to evaluate
Assemble a team
Create a timeline for completion
We’ll show you how to do each of these in the steps below.
Thoroughly evaluate every aspect of your waste processes
You can’t fix problems you don’t know about. To make sure no savings opportunity is missed, you’ll want to do this basic audit as part of the larger waste review process.
For those who want to do a Basic Waste Audit, we’ve outline a simple yet effective audit process below. This audit evaluates two of the biggest ways most companies overspend on their waste haulers: equipment and service levels.
You can use the steps below to evaluate whether the service levels you’re getting are really what you need. At the end of the audit, you’ll know if you have an equipment problem, and you’ll know if your haulers are servicing your site as often as is stipulated in your contract.
There are seven steps to a basic audit:
Review your contract(s). How often should your location be getting serviced?
Make a list of all equipment that receives service.
Pick a time to conduct the audit. (Try to avoid holidays)
For four weeks, at the same time each day, take pictures of the fill status of your dumpsters, toters, or compactors on all of your sites
Record this information in a google sheet that all parties can have access to, and upload the pictures to a shared drive, sorted by location
Evaluate information
Plan next steps
After four weeks have passed, review all of the information and pictures you have for each of your location sites. If you have the invoices for that month, take a look at those as well.
Ask yourself two key questions:
How often were my garbage containers or dumpsters completely full?
How often were pick-ups missed?
If your containers weren’t completely full, you can consider making a few changes. Maybe you need smaller equipment. Maybe you need fewer pick-ups during the week. Maybe you need both!
And if pick-ups were missed, you may need to do some follow-up work. Were pick-ups frequently missed prior to this four week period? Is there a solid history of this hauler completely bagging out?
In either case, this audit will give you the information you need to evaluate if your service levels are really what you need.
If you want to go one additional step, you can also get other bids from area haulers. There is most likely another hauler near you who can provide the right service levels at the right price point. This will give you another valuable piece of information as you evaluate your waste management process.
Basic Waste Audits Help Solve Waste Problems
Knowing exactly what the problem is is the first step towards finding a solution.
A basic audit gets at the heart of the two biggest problems in most company’s waste management: equipment and service levels. By evaluating both of these in one full swoop, you can find savings opportunities - and relief from repeated hauler issues.