Resource Efficiency in Organisations

Quick On-Site Waste Assessment (qualitative assessment)

The level of detail that you wish to go into when doing a quick waste assessment will be up to you. For many it will just involve a walk through audit the site and having a look at the systems in place and in the bins. However, it should ideally consider the following steps, which involve a more structured and detailed approach to the 'quick' assessment:

1. Identify the main areas where waste is generated
2. When new bags are fitted put labels on the various bags around the site (The level of detail you use will be up to you. For example, all offices could be described as 'office' or by specific offices e.g. 3rd Floor Sales.)
3. When waste is collected get the cleaners to store the various bags in a specific location (e.g. empty wheelie bin, unused shed, etc.)
4. At the end of a defined period (e.g. day, 2 days or week – depending on volumes), again, this is up to you, weigh the bags according to the different areas.
5. As you are doing this make a visual inspection and "guesstimate" the quantities of different waste streams in the bags, e.g.
   a. Paper 20%, cardboard 15%, metals 5%, food 40%, general rubbish, 20%
   NOTE: this guesstimate by its nature will be volumetric so make sure take the densities into consideration when converting to weights (e.g. 5% metal by volume may weigh more than 20% office paper by volume)
6. Once you have done this you aggregate the information and you can generate profiles similar to the following:
   

   

   Examples from a Hotel Waste Assessment

   
   
   These will allow you identify the main waste producing areas and the main types of waste going into the mixed wastes. From this you can come up with a plan to improve segregation, and more importantly prevent waste before it is generated.