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>> Anne: Welcome to Profit with Waste Reduction Strategies presented by the South Carolina
Green Hospitality Alliance. I'm Anne McGovern, the Green Hospitality Program Manager in the
DHEC Office of Solid Waste Reduction and Recycling. I'm going to be your moderator for today's
webinar. I'm glad you joined us today for the second
conversation in a series of webinars aimed at making restaurants and lodging facilities
in South Carolina more sustainable. Today we'll be talking about waste reduction and
recycling. Specifically, what makes a recycling program successful and how efficiently managing
your waste can save your business money. Our first webinar was in February, which focused
on why sustainability is important for hospitality facilities.
The remainder of the webinars will focus on specific topics, including energy and water
conservation, local and sustainable food, and green purchasing. I wanted to take a moment
to thank the Environmental Sustainability Resource Center for providing technical support
for our webinar series, and to the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association for their
help in recruiting our speakers. We have two speakers this afternoon. The first
is Tiffany Jaspers. She is the Recycling Coordinator for the City of Columbia. We also have Norman
Dunagan, who is the founder and CEO of The Dumpster Depot in Aiken, South Carolina. Douglas
O'Flaherty, with the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association, as well as myself,
will also be available to answer questions at the end.
We'll spend about half an hour hearing from our speakers, and then give you some time
to ask questions. We're going to jump right in with our speakers.
I would like to introduce our first speaker, Tiffany Jaspers. Tiffany is currently the
Recycling Coordinator for the City of Columbia, where in just the past three months, she has
added more than fifty businesses to their recycling program. Previously, she worked
as the Recycling Coordinator for the University of South Carolina, and has worked in DHEC's
office, actually helping to create the South Carolina Green Hospitality Alliance.
We're really pleased to have Tiffany share her experiences working with businesses on
recycling and waste reduction in the midlands. Tiffany, I will turn it over to you.
>> Tiffany: Thanks Anne. You can go ahead and go to that first slide. Thank you. The
lay out looks a little bit different, but here actually, are two fliers that we have
that we provide to businesses, including the hospitality industry. We were able to receive grant funding
that provides us with free containers for collection. It's first come, first served
that we make available to our businesses here in the Columbia area, and ones within city limits.
The city has always offered free weekly pick up for our businesses as well. This makes
it where we can now offer the businesses free collection, free assistance, and now with containers
as well. Just to go over a couple of things you can see here on our fliers. The roll carts.
The 96 gallon roll carts at the bottom of the screen is required for all of our businesses
to use. That's the way we collect our material. Everyone is provided with at least one of
those. Also, we have a few other options, like the deskside bin, which can be used
in office areas, which has also been very resourceful for the restaurants and bars area
in particular. A lot of time there's a shelving unit under the bar that makes it more convenient
for recycling. Also, we have the Slim Jim, which is about the third one down. We can
see there's also lids and wheel bases that we use to try and make it a little more efficient
when moving a lot of that glass around. It can get pretty heavy. This twenty-three gallon
container can be very useful in those tight spaces.
I would say by far, the most common concern we have is whether or not there's enough space
for recycling, particularly for bars and restaurants. They usually have to keep three things in
mind with the advice that I give. The first is that the city takes all of their material
mixed. There's no need to have a glass bin, a plastic bin. There's no sorting involved.
The second is that you've already found space and that is to throw it away. Some bar locations
have found that napkins were the only non recyclable item that was going on there at
the bar area. We've been able to switch straight out from all garbage to all recycling bins.
Even if there's just the one, their picture is a black, regular garbage can that you would
see in the bar area, at least with some that we've worked with. We've been able to swap
it right out for one of these Slim Jim containers. We just had a little bag, like a grocery bag, where
they were able to toss the napkins in. That's been very successful in our bar areas.
Also, the desk side where we can do a fifty-fifty blend based on what kind of materials they've
got at the bar area to supply two of those bins in the space where one container used to be,
then still be able to collect everything. If you have the space to throw it away, you
have the space to recycle it. The third being the same amount of waste is
being handled. This means two things. One, that you only need the same amount of capacity.
The same amount of space can be used again. That volume issue is not going to change.
Secondly, there's no more time used because you're still emptying the same amount of waste.
We go in and one of the concerns were that by using two of the smaller containers you
would be emptying. We found pretty quickly that's not true. Your volume isn't increasing.
It's just the container you're putting it in.
You don't have twice as much waste just because you switched containers. It's still the same
amount of material going through. It's always good to reiterate this. The volume bulk does
not change, just the color of the container. Also, there's lots of little concerns. Each
business comes with their own challenges. I just wanted to make sure that business are
aware that what seems like a big challenge to them is relatively small and easy to fix,
usually, for those of us in the recycling industry. The same way they handle challenges
in their businesses, recycling professionals do the same. As experts in our field, these
obstacles can often come as it's pictured here, with a small change.
This example is a hotel that we have on Main Street in downtown Columbia. I have seen
this problem now, I would say probably with five or six businesses in the downtown area.
The issue would come up where their roll carts, pictured here is actually the after, a way
that we've fixed it. You would see the two roll carts that are circled in this picture
would be over flowing with material. Not just recyclables and garbage as well, causing a
lot of litter and smells and just a lot of issues going on.
To them, it seemed like the recycling program might be a failure and they didn't know how
to go forward. Just by going to their property and taking a look, we were able to fix it
right then and there, very easily. Notice that the foot traffic in this picture would
be going from right to left. The patrons at neighboring restaurants and coming out of
their cars from the meters would be dumping their garbage in the first two roll carts
they come across just because it was the first container they were coming to, during the
foot traffic. As they would come by, unfortunately, the
way previously the roll carts had been laid out is that they would have two roll carts
at a time go into the building, fill them up with recyclables and bring them back out.
They used to put the full roll carts to the right of this line of roll carts to your left.
Simply by switching, making the last two roll carts garbage roll carts, because that was
going to go into them, we couldn't change that. All the rest are still recycling.
Now there's no overflow. There's no litter in their area. Also, their recyclables are
not being contaminated. What seemed like a very complex issue, was as simple as just
switching the directions of the roll carts once we realized where the foot traffic was
coming from. Overall, my goal would be for businesses to
see that before you become frustrated or decide a recycling program does not fit your business,
to call on your local recycling coordinator or work with your vendor, or reach out to
DHEC's recycling office. Our job is to make recycling effective and cost efficient. I
have yet to have a business where recycling was not able to be feasible and also where
it was not a good business decision. There's always the opportunity for success. You just
have to use those free resources out there. >> Anne: Thanks so much, Tiffany. It's nice
to have a local government perspective. A lot of business don't realize they can reach
out to their local governments. Every county and a lot of cities have Recycling Coordinators
or someone who's willing to work with them. I really appreciate you showing us that it
can work, especially in an urban setting. I know a lot times when I work with properties,
a huge issue is folks say, "I don't really have the room to recycle." It's nice to have
an example like the City of Columbia, where we really can find solutions to make recycling
work. Thank you. Our next speaker is Norman Dunagan. He's the
founder and CEO of The Dumpster Depot. Norman started Dumpster Depot to provide waste removal
services for commercial and construction businesses. Inspired by recycling efforts at his previous
employer, Dunagan set his goal to reduce the amount of material going to the landfill with
the ultimate objective of achieving zero waste. He was worked closely with one of our Green
Hospitality Alliance members, the Wilcox Inn. We are pleased to have him discuss his experience
helping hotels reduce waste and save money. Norman, I will turn it over to you.
>> Norman: Thank you so much, guys. I wanted to just have the opportunity to get to speak
to you, because I truly believe that the hospitality industry is really that kind of a 'Honey Hole'
for recycled materials. We're working with several hotels and we've had a lot of success.
The things that I'm going to talk about today are things that we have experienced that are
successful. On the first line, I put "Just Go Green and
Save." I didn't say "Go Green and Save Money" or "Go Green and Save the Environment," because
the fact is what we've found is there's a lot of things saved. We're saving natural
resources by recycling. Obviously we know we're saving on carbon emissions. As an entrepreneur,
what I was interested in doing was helping people save money through recycling.
I think that's been the biggest objective as people look at going green. They're
not able to justify paying extra money to recycle. Just as you heard the previous speaker
say that there are a lot of free services out there to help you go green. We've got
the Commerce Department of South Carolina has something called "Recyclenomics." I suggest
Googling that. What that does, is that will allow you to connect to many vendors that
offer the services you're looking for. Some were at-cost vendors and some are organizations
who are just trying to make sure that we're reducing the amount of waste that's going into the
landfill. I want to speak a little bit on landfills, guys, because the way that we're
going with recycling is definitely the way that the entire country will go. There are
less landfills today than there were two years ago. Less than there were four years ago.
Much less than there was in the past. We have a goal of completely eliminating the
need for landfills. The trash business or the garbage business is the most exciting
business to be in today, I think. Because we're finding solutions for different types
of waste almost monthly. As I go through these slides, we're going to address some of those.
The first thing I want to talk to you about is how to green your hotel by reducing waste.
I want to ask you the question, are you probably asking why do you want to recycle? The first
thing I'd like to look at is the 'Money Talk' of getting rid of your current waste streams.
It's significant. A lot of what you throw away is bulky, lightweight items. The fact
that you're paying for them to leave and probably paying by weight in a lot or cases, there's
a definite advantage to recycling. Every piece of material you pull out of your
waste stream and get recycled is less than is going to the landfill, which is being weighed.
Your hotel or motel is probably being charged for that. What we're trying to do is make
sure that we document those. If you're looking at a vendor to work with, we suggest that
in your request for proposals that you make sure the vendor is going to give you some
type of reporting, if available, so you know if you're doing better and how much better
that you are doing. What's even more great is as you pull out
this waste, you're pulling out a lot of volume. If you're paying on a per pickup basis and
you're pulling out thirty percent of the waste stream and getting it recycled, obviously
that should result in thirty percent less hauls. The haul fee portion is the most expensive
portion of eliminating waste. We know that there's a money savings.
The thing I'm most excited about is I'm a small business. I'm an entrepreneur. I love
helping other businesses increase their sales. We can do this through recycling if you use
this in your marketing. Recycling is the most visible part of your environmental commitment.
Many of you are doing things with reducing water. You're doing things with reducing emissions.
You're trying to wash towels less. All of these things that you're doing, they're great.
Does your customer really know that you're committed to saving our environment?
It they don't, here are some ideas that I think could help you use all your efforts
in reaching your customers emotionally. The first one is the internal marketing. When
I say 'internal', of course I'm talking about the guests that come to your facility. I'm
also talking about the people in the hotel industry, you want to get your team involved.
You want to get them sold on the effort that you're trying to achieve.
If you have a restaurant in your facility, it's going to be the staff that are going
to make sure that this is a success for you. We want them to know that you're committed
and that this is the direction you're definitely going to keep going. So many times today,
we start something and then something else takes precedence and we quit what we were
doing. Recycling is something that you want to get started. You want to take baby steps,
but document your steps and continue to communicate to your staff what's going on.
Don't forget the opportunity to reach out and get customers who are loyal to you because
of your efforts. That's where the external marketing comes in. I want you to make recycling a part
of your website and a part of any literature that's printed for your business so that your
efforts are known by everyone you want to reach.
Now, internal marketing, what I'm talking about again is the top top left. You'll see a blue,
clear recycle bin. That would probably be for your wait staff as they come out of the
serving area. It's a place for them to put maybe their personal cans, definitely plastic
bottles. If you're having a convention, there's going to be a lot of plastic water bottles
come out. You want to be able to collect those. This is just clearly marked. With it being
open like this, it allows anyone around to know that that indeed is a recycle bin.
Below is here, this is one of our partners. This is the Augusta Marriott. What we're doing
here is we're co-branding with them. We want everyone to know we're the ones providing
the service. Also, Marriott wants everyone to know that they're committed to a Greener
America. On this bin, it's hard to see, but on the bottom left we're documenting all the
things that's being recycled at that facility. This particular container is at the TEE Center
in Augusta, which is a large convention center. This can be seen from the front of the property,
which is rare for us, that's true, but they're getting some marketing out of the efforts
to recycle. We're really happy with the picture you see on the right. Cigarette butts are
something that is kind of new to be recycled, but what it allows you to do is these can
be in any one of your common areas, where you can put your logo. Of course these cans
can be designed any way that you wish. It tells anyone walking by, first of all,
that you're committed to recycling, you see the recycle logo. Most people will
be very interested that you can recycle cigarette butts. It's a way to be seen as many times
as you can that you're recycling product. On the internal marketing, if you have room
keys, make sure that somewhere on the room key it is displayed that you want to recycle
the room key. Maybe it's a chance for you to let people know about some other sustainability
efforts that you have. I think there should be some kind of a box at the counter that
people can return these room keys. It just gets them involved in your recycling program.
If you'll notice there in the center, that is something that was printed that was left in each
room. You're communicating to your guests that you are recycling at your facility and their help
is needed in helping you achieve your goal. When I said the 'Internal Marketing', you've
got to get your team involved. This is something that we've done inside of a hotel. Where we are
documenting what we're saving from the landfill. They're doing co-mingled waste, as was discussed
earlier in the presentation. We're also doing a food waste program for them where all of
their organic foods are being collected and those are being recycled.
The cardboard is obviously something that everyone should be looking at. We're weighing
the cardboard. They start off with a goal and then they're tracking how they move through
2013. Soap is something that I know a lot of people are already recycling. If you're
not, this is a free service in most cases. It really does have a great end story. Consider
that, if it's something that you're not doing now.
Obviously the common commodity that I think anyone wants to start with is definitely cardboard,
definitely paper, any plastic containers. You need to make sure the vendor that you
have access to, make sure you know which recyclable they're collecting for plastic. It's usually
marked one through seven. Some facilities only take number one and number two. Some
more aggressive facilities may take all the way up to number six or number seven. Just
check and see. I would recommend looking on recyclenomics.org to check out who is a local
person for you. Always metal is a great thing to recycle.
It's one of the most exciting because there should be rebates on any metal that you collect.
Glass is available, definitely as you get more toward the urban areas. Sometimes a little
more difficult outside. Glass is one of the most exciting items to recycle because no
matter how many times we recycle glass, it's just as good as it was the first time. If
we don't recycle glass and we throw it away, that's a resource that's buried forever.
We build more with this part of it because this is a more difficult thing to offer. We
really take all of our customers through definitely the basics we just discussed. Then, we want
to go even deeper. This is going to require you to have an aggressive recycling group
working with you. These are things you should ask your current recycler to work on if they're
not currently accepting it. We are recycling cigarette butts. This is
an exciting part for me because this is one of the newest that we've added. Food and yard
waste can be recycled. It can be composted. The State of South Carolina is working on
changing our laws to where this is easier to do. There are several options for larger
facilities. In-vessel composting is the most common and is approved by DHEC. Right now
there's a pilot program in Charleston where we're doing windrows.
We can take food waste and yard waste and mix it together and use heat and oxygen and
we can turn that waste into viable, high nitrogen soil within anywhere from fourteen to twenty-one
days. Forty percent of all waste created falls into either the food or yard waste. This is
an exciting thing that's coming up. Make sure that you stay on top of this. Imagine reducing
the amount of waste that you're sending by weight by forty percent. What would that look
like on your balance sheet? Cooking oil is something that a lot of people
collect. They use it for a lot of different things. There are some exciting things going
on with cooking oil. Later on in the presentation, I'll show you one that we've implemented.
We talked about soaps. Soap is another one that has become a big recycling program in the
hospitality industry. The soap can be collected and it can be regenerated and sent overseas
to help people with better hygiene, which is reducing the cases of diarrhea and reducing
the cases of death due to poor hygiene. One thing people don't really look at a lot,
but we make sure we educate, is surplus property like, furnishings, appliances and desks. Those
things can be reused instead of just thrown in a dumpster and taken to a landfill. There
are several community organizations that are willing to take these things and re-purpose
them. Do a little research. If you're having a hard time, our contact information will
be at the end. We will help you find someone in your near area that can service for you.
The same thing goes for computers, television, and electronics. All these things are now
being recycled today. The State of South Carolina is banning them from our landfills. This is
one where we would love to help you with as well. There are outlets for it. You just have
to look for them. Of course, toner cartridges, any kind of mercury containing products,
being fluorescent light bulbs and batteries. Those are readily recyclable now. There is
no reason for those to be thrown away. Pallets. Our program that we hope to do is
to use the pallets, mix it with some food and yard waste, again, to make the soil. Pallets
can also be ground up and made into new products as well, as far as playground equipment. They
can go into the mulching industry. They can go to paper mills. Also, of course, they can
be made back into new plywood. There are options for pallets and your recycling coordinator
or someone who is helping you recycle should definitely be looking at for this as well.
Talking about achieving the vision I just laid out. Locally, we're working our local
restaurants and hotels to where we handle their waste and part of what we do is collect
the used vegetable oil from the facility. We're producing biodiesel from it that runs
our trash truck. Currently forty percent of all of our fuel used, we make ourselves from
a waste product from our customers. We let them use this in their marketing that their
oil is producing a biofuel that runs their vendor's trucks. We also cosponsor them by
making sure that all of their names are on our truck because they are in the market as well.
Here's just a good example. This is a warehouse up in Atlanta where we send all the shampoo
and all of the soaps. They collect it. They process it and ship it overseas to children
who, again, may not have access to good hygiene. This is just a really feel-good part of recycling.
If you're participating, you want your customers to know you're helping out with a situation
like this. At this time I'm going to go ahead and turn
it back over to the moderator. I'm sure Tiffany and myself would be willing to answer any
questions that you guys may have. >> Anne: Thanks so much, Norman. While I've
got you on the line, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about your experience working
with the Wilcox Inn. I know they are the ones that had referred you as a speaker for today.
I know that they have done a lot of waste reduction, recycling, and I was hoping that
maybe you could just touch on a few things that maybe stood out with them, since their
one of our Hospitality Alliance Partners? >> Norman: I would love to. Do you want me
to go ahead and do that? >> Anne: Sure.
>> Norman: Shannon Ellis is the proprietor of the Wilcox Inn in South Carolina. We've
just made a fantastic team. She has a passion for making sure she leaves as little a footprint
as possible. I have this same passion. We've worked together with the City of Aiken to
try to come up with a Zero Waste plan for the entire downtown area. You guys in Columbia,
this same thing is being done in Columbia. I've been a participant on the advisory board
to go Zero Waste for downtown Columbia. A lot of people are working on the same thing
all across our state. There's a race nationwide for states to be able to progress in recycling.
In the end, we want to be a leader in recycling so that a lot of the processors for the secondary
market locate their businesses in South Carolina. That will do two things. That's going to make
sure there are many jobs revolved around recycling in South Carolina. It's also going to make
sure that your costs are lowered. As we collect these secondary products, they
have to be sent off to be processed. If they have to go to, say, Ohio, then the shipping
cost is very large. If we have more processors in South Carolina, those shipping costs are
going to be very minimal. Your entire recycling program will continue to become less and less
and less expensive. With Shannon, they have a total sustainability
plan. I wish that Shannon could elaborate on it, because she knows it much better than
I do. They have a water recycling program that they run. They definitely advertise well
that they're a Green facility. Her website has an environmental page, where they're taking
advantage of all the expenses that they've taken and all the hard work that they've done.
They're making sure that all their potential customers, when they come to their website,
are made aware of all the things they're doings. We went in and met with Shannon. We did a
site tour. The first thing we did was a waste audit. We wanted to find out the three main
things that she was throwing away. We did discover those three things. What we did was
we tried to make sure that we set up recycling bins at the point of origin. Where the person
creates the waste, we want to make sure that recycle bin is close and easily accessible
for them to throw the product in to. She worked with her team on a procedure plan
where those items would be collected and set by the curb. They have a very good, clean
separation of their co-mingled recyclables and their waste. It's always well marked and
it's always well separated. They do a great job. It was touched on earlier that the co-mingled
recycling really does increase how often and how much your staff or the general public
will use the bins. As you're talking to a recycle vendor, make
sure that the co-mingled waste and co-mingled recycling is something that they offer. She
was ready to support us with the cooking oil program. She already had a solution for her
oil. She wanted to help us sell the local story of her used cooking oil being manufactured
into diesel fuel for our trucks. In turn, we promote her business as being one of our
green businesses in Aiken. We're trying to develop a page for our chamber
of commerce to where anyone who is in this Green Business category, they have their own
web page. We're trying to create a culture around local sustainability. We're trying
to give them the upper hand and be competitive. Allowing small businesses to be competitive
with very large businesses. We're also allowing large businesses to get some exposure for
all the money they've spend to be sustainable. Shannon has been perfect to work with. She
understands that she doesn't want to leave a footprint. She also communicates it very
well to potential clients that she does it as well. Have I touched on what you wanted
me to? >> Anne: Yes. Thank you, I really appreciate
that. Tiffany, if you're still there, I was hoping you could maybe share some feedback
from the programs that you all have implemented in the bar and restaurant recycling. What
kind of feedback have you gotten from the hospitality facilities in the Columbia area
in terms of how the program is working, or if you've had any push back as you got that
started? >> Tiffany: I wish there was more to say.
I don't actually. I can say it's been very simple. It's been very easy to maintain, on
their part, of course. Very easy to get started. It's all around been a success. We don't really
have any horror stories, really. We've had, in regards to push back? No. Not at all. Restaurants
are calling me. I put out there that we have it available. I don't have a budget so there's
no paid advertisement. When businesses hear about us it's through their organizations
and local chapters spreading the word for us. Also, via word of mouth has been huge
as well. Typically, I'd say about ninety percent of
the businesses, especially the hospitality, it's the owner and sometimes general manager
that's reaching out to us directly, which I think is important. I would say that especially
when it comes to composting and other environmental efforts, the chef of the restaurant, for example,
is the most interested in the beginning. However, whether is is because of turn over or working
sixty hours a week, that person cannot be charged with also running the recycling program.
You've got to have really top down support. I've been very fortunate in this city. The
last several months has just been ... we get a lot of, I guess you could say, local chain
locations. For example, someone that owns eight restaurants in the area, they're ready
to implement it at all eight restaurants. Word of mouth has been great. We've been doing
a lot of partnerships with local places. That space always seems to be our biggest challenge.
That includes the outside. A lot of the properties, their address is
A or B after it. They just don't have any curb space. Their property line ends where
their building ends. We had a few places where we've clustered them and had collection points
outside for them, where they all share. Overall, it's only been successful. If we ever do have
anyone come forward, they think it's a challenge. It would be very easy to address that just
because we've seen so many successes. I think at this point, word of mouth and the
recycling program here having a good reputation for itself. People come in with a very positive
outlook on it. >> Anne: I wanted to make just two quick comments.
Talking about what Norman mentioned with composting. I've actually been working on composting regulation
at DHEC and can say that we have revised our compost regulation. Composting should be a
lot easier to do across the state. I would say for all of our hospitality facilities,
you are going to be seeing more offset commercial composting facilities, I think, popping up
in the next few years. The way our regulations were written before,
you could only really do on site composting, but I think, especially with the success of
the composting program in Charleston, we're going to see more businesses interested in
doing composting and taking that material. I definitely think that is going to be the
next big thing, in terms of waste reduction recycling, really focusing on food waste.
If anybody is interested in talking about composting or food waste reduction, I will
be working on that as part of a project this year. Please feel free to contact me.
>> Anne: That concludes today's webinar. I want to again thank our speakers. I hope everyone
has a great afternoon.