What you can measure, you can manage. This is true across all walks of life, including our waste.

While a growing number of businesses and municipalities have implemented recycling and composting programs, many of these programs aren’t as impactful as they could be due to constant struggles with contamination—recyclable materials are still being placed in bins destined for the landfill, while non-recyclable materials are being found in recycling and compost bins, and even more commonly, finding compostable or recyclable material in the trash.

Conducting a waste audit of your business or municipality is a great way to get to know your waste disposal patterns and to start determining if there is economic value in your waste stream, or to mitigate disposal costs. While your main goal should be to maximize what gets recycled and composted, it’s just as important to ensure that landfill waste isn’t being placed in recycling and compost bins, as this creates contamination which, in many instances, results in the entire load being sent to a landfill, and your diversion rate taking a hit.

Black Earth Compost is uniquely suited to perform these audits for several reasons: we want to help maximize what can be composted/recycled but only if it is compostable/recyclable, we know best what is compostable/recyclable, and we have no inherent interest, as other waste companies do, to maximize trash.