Optimizing Waste Streams for a Greener Building
As a restaurant owner or operator, the idea of making your establishment more “green” may bring to mind higher costs and unnecessary hassles. Especially in the area of waste, which is by economic definition a costly externality, greening your business would seem like exactly the wrong thing to do.
Chipotle Mexican Grill, a rapidly-growing and very successful fast food chain, says it has only started what it claims to be a long-term commitment to making not only existing locations more environmentally-friendly, but to consider environmental impact from the ground up when they are building new locations.
It is certainly easy to dismiss any attempts at corporate responsibility as just an olive branch to the green movement or simply lip service. Skeptics might say that Chipotle is only undergoing this green way-of-life as a public relations maneuver, something to make them stand out from taco or hamburger chains in the world.
While it may be true that going green certainly won’t hurt Chipotle’s image, the way Research and Development Director Scott Shippey passionately describes the program, you can’t help but believe that there’s some genuine concern for big business’ often-harmful effect on the environment and subsequently the surrounding community.
Facility managers responsible for overseeing new building construction, maintaining existing buildings, and creating and implementing the company standards and guidelines need to become excited about trying to make facilities more environmentally sustainable, thus minimizing their contribution to local landfills.
“The biggest myth that needs to be busted,” says Shippey, a nine-year Chipotle veteran who started when there just eight stores and a handful of executives “is that recycling is going to cost you money. Until you start researching this and crunching the numbers, you don’t know about the savings you can see or the payback you can negotiate.”
When building a new location or renovating an existing facility, there are numerous steps you can take to minimize the environmental impact of the build. The most effective way of minimizing your waste stream is by using separate dumpsters or roll-off containers for construction and demolition debris, as these materials can be recycled for profit.
Even small things like making sure the construction crew “measures twice and cuts once” can reduce the amount of waste material produced. When selecting construction materials, it is helpful to evaluate such attributes as their toxicity, sustainability, recyclability, and percentage of recycled content.
Additionally, the use of recycled building materials in your own building is not only environmentally-friendly, it can also save you money versus purchasing new material. As a suggestion, facility managers need to speak with vendors about their packaging and excess waste these suppliers are sending to facility, which unnecessarily contributes to the waste stream.
It is difficult to know exactly how to navigate the often-complicated process of optimally managing your waste stream on a new build or remodel, so contacting your waste management firm is a must while in the planning stages of any sort of construction project.
A new certification organization has recently emerged called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) that has proven most helpful for organizations looking to take the most productive environmental stance in building construction and modification.
Along with your waste management firm, LEED can be an invaluable resource for optimally directing your C&D debris and even designing a building for long-term sustainability in the area of waste.
One of the easiest ways to minimize your facility’s impact on the environment, while at the same time actually saving you money, is to implement an in-store recycling program. Such a program can include cardboard, glass, plastic, paper, and aluminum.
By having customers and employees divert recyclables into separate bins, you can often resell the contents of those bins with the help of your waste management firm. Plus, diverting waste cuts down on the dumpster size and frequency of pickup that your location(s) require.
SLM has seen that by diverting cardboard alone, it has cut down many a customer’s waste stream by 30%, and that some facilities go from needing an 8 cubic yard container being picked up 3 times a week, down to a 4 yard version that only needs to be picked up twice weekly.
Another way to minimize waste is using washable flatware and glasses instead of disposable plastic, paper, or styrofoam varieties. Chains like Koo Koo Roo and Fuddruckers use silverware instead of disposables which saves money both on purchasing supplies and on the monthly waste bill.
If you must use disposable items, try to use ones that can be recycled like certain plastic flatware and straws, paper cups, and unbleached napkins (preferably with a high post-consumer recycled material content).
In the kitchen, instead of throwing food waste in the trash, you could try collecting it and offering it to a local farming cooperative for use as compost or sold to a pig farmer for re-use. Fry grease, which should always be collected in bulk or barrel containers can be stored at the facility, picked up by a Grease vendor, and possibly rebates provided to you, versus being charged. This way it can be used for bio-diesel fuel in some cases.
Minimizing water usage is yet another to make a cost effective impact on the environment. Installing low flow toilets, automatic faucets, and hand dryers instead of towels can drastically reduce the waste from your bathroom.
Even relatively clean waste water that is used to wash vegetables or rinse silverware can by rerouted to water your facility’s plants and greenery.
Chipotle’s Shippey has even bigger dreams than just optimized waste streams, though. He would like to some day make Chipotle locations fully self-sustaining, implementing solar panels and perhaps even rainwater collectors to move his restaurants almost completely “off the grid.”
The key point to take away from your experience is that being environmentally-friendly is not only the right thing to do; it is appreciated by the community and can actually save you money due to incentives and programs that didn’t exist several years ago. s a business owner who is profiting from the community where you’re located, it is only right that you do everything feasibly possible to leave a small footprint in the environment and make your establishment a positive example to those that you serve.