Helping to waste not
Services spring up to help businesses get cash for their trash
AT the Igloo cooler factory in Katy, workers feed sheets of white plastic into machines that stamp out lids and liners, and send them on a merry-goround that assembles the parts. Fiery torches prep coolers so insulation will adhere inside, and employees stack them in boxes at the other end of the line.
Years ago, leftover plastic that the company couldn’t reuse, and any cooler parts that came out deformed, went to the trash. But like a growing number of companies, Igloo now recycles all its excess plastic, along with packaging materials it didn’t recycle before. The company has long ground up and reused most plastic internally, but now what it can’t make into coolers, it sells.
Igloo got on board early with commercial recycling, and for over 15 years has worked with Houston-based Avangard Innovative to cut costs and turn its recoverable trash into
“Anything can be recycled. It’s just a matter of collecting and cost.”
Chaz Miller, National Waste & Recycling Association
revenue. Last year Igloo recycled nearly 2.4 million pounds of plastic, wood, cardboard and oil with Avangard’s help, saving nearly 4,000 cubic yards of landfill space.
When Rick Perez started the company with $1,000 and a couple of contracted trucks as a University of Houston sophomore working out of his parents’ house in Katy 20 years ago, many businesses didn’t think twice about trashing packaging and leftover materials, he said. Manufacturers for years have reused materials internally to save money, but now they’re going further, and other industries are jumping in. ‘Silent growth’
As more companies become concerned with their environmental impact and image or seek to save money, there is more demand for services like those offered by Avangard. New businesses are popping up, and established consulting firms are extending their reach to trash.
“It is one of the hottest but silent growth sectors,” Stephanie Barger, who founded the nonprofit U.S. Zero Waste Business Council three years ago, wrote in an email.
Avangard alone now has over 2,000 clients ranging from grocery chains to worldwide manufacturers. It brings in over $100 million a year in revenue and has 550 employees working in 12 countries helping clients recycle.
Perez teamed up with co-founder Walker Chan, a robotics engineer with a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin, to build compacting equipment that makes recycling more efficient, and software to track all the materials that go in and out of clients’ factories and retail stores. Vast majority reused
Igloo is able to put 98 percent of leftover plastic back into making new coolers at its plant. The remaining 2 percent, plus other materials, it sells to Avangard, which in turn sells them to companies in its network that use recyclables to make anything from clothes hangers to plastic bags.
Avangard argues that selling its services is easy because costs are low. The materials that get recycled have already been paid for and would otherwise generate no revenue, and cost money to throw out.
“Why do you want to pay a bill for something you’ve already paid for, and you’re paying to have it hauled away?” Barger said.
But even some companies that meticulously monitor their balance sheets ignore the trash bill, Perez said.
Last year, Avangard said, it diverted over 500,000 tons of trash from landfills, and helped recycle 1.08 billion pounds of material, saving 1.8 million cubic yards of landfill space.
With its Natura Zero software, Avangard tracks materials coming in and out, figuring out the most efficient way to reuse material and haul it out. It also sells balers that allow more recyclables to go in each haul, and grinders that make discarded plastic into salable pellets. At Igloo, leftover plastic and products that come out mangled go into the grinder. A chest-high box of finger-width white plastic shards sits on the other end. Home waste is different
Avangard makes money primarily by selling recyclables for its clients to its network of companies that need a steady stream of recycled materials. It sets prices, quarterly or annually depending on the contract, for the material it buys from clients based on commodity prices. Although low commodity prices have residential recyclers reeling, since they can’t sell recyclables for enough money to cover costs, Avangard doesn’t have the high costs of home pickup and equipment that sorts through soiled pizza boxes and countless types of plastic packaging. Most materials coming out of a manufacturer or store are cleaner, higher quality and already sorted.
The company also charges licensing fees on its Natura Zero software. Representatives visit regularly to suggest how Igloo can increase its recycling and to train employees on how to use new equipment.
“That’s probably the best part about them. They do that for free,” Igloo supply chain director Patrick Poole said about Avangard’s continual assessment of how the company could cut transport costs or sell more material. Recently Igloo’s Avangard representative suggested that the company start recycling foam and more cardboard.
“They stay on the cutting edge so we don’t have to,” associate marketing manager Katie Davis said.
In the back of Avangard’s warehouse, workers toss multicolored foam into foam densifiers designed by Chan, and a thick pink taffy-like goo comes out the other end, which is cooled into bricks. Densified into its original plastic form, it can be transported in fewer truckloads. Most of it will be remade into foam for packaging, but some will turn into office furniture, irrigation piping or decking.
Chaz Miller, director of policy and advocacy for the National Waste & Recycling Association, said foam recycling is on the rise.
Though Igloo declined to disclose how much it had saved from reduced waste, or how much it made back from selling recyclables, Poole said the company’s waste strategy has become much more efficient.
Igloo makes about 40 percent more coolers than it did 10 years ago, he said. “But I know we’re not up 40 percent in hauls.” Grocery waste
Grocery stores are another big client for Avangard. With grocers’ slim margins, recycling packaging, and reducing food waste by breaking food down in digesters and flushing it down the drain, like a giant sink disposal, or composting it, can bolster the bottom line. Perez said that for some grocery clients, the amount they generate, and save, from diverting waste can contribute up to 20 percent of their profit.
As companies become more interested in sustainability, that creates a niche for businesses trying to help them do that.
“I think there’s a movement, from housewife to the CEOs now, that if you can do something good for the environment, why not? And I think that’s what it’s going to take for this industry to continue to grow the way it’s been growing,” Perez said. “It’s changed drastically from when I started.” Resource managers
Barger, whose organization does education and training on getting to zero waste, said this is the new face of waste companies, and they call themselves resource managers.
“The industry is growing rapidly — we are seeing more and more companies like Avangard and/ or waste companies are transforming themselves into a resource management company,” Barger wrote in an email.
Zero-waste consultants have popped up, large management consulting companies are getting in, and other companies are making adjustments inhouse, she said.
Charlie Scott founded Cascadia Consulting in Seattle in 1993 to advise companies and the public sector on waste. The com- pany starts projects by sorting through loads of a client’s trash, weighing up to 100 kinds of material, and assessing the feasibility of recycling each, Scott explained. It also assists in reducing water and energy use.
“Waste costs money; reducing waste will save money,” Scott said. “But it takes time and effort, and most companies’ primary objective is not diverting waste.”
Consulting giants have also gotten in on the opportunity. On its website, Deloitte markets “assessing end-to-end environmental impact” by looking at the materials a company uses and how they can be reused or recycled.
Moore Recycling, a consulting firm based in Sonoma, Calif., does less hands-on work. The company publishes reports on the industry and will suggest potential buyers of recyclables to clients, founder Patty Moore said.
And a lot of companies have taken on their own sustainability efforts. Toyota meets the U.S. Zero Waste Business Council’s definition of a zero-waste business by diverting at least 90 percent of waste from landfills. In the last few years, Toyota began reusing copper from old cars. It also found a cement company that could use its metal shavings from manufacturing that previously accounted for 41 percent of non-salable waste.
There’s increasing interest in reducing how much waste is produced in the first place, Scott said.
Also, the importance of appearing sustainable is driving more companies to make the effort.
“It’s almost imperative to be environmentally responsible these days in terms of your brand,” Scott said.
Developing infrastructure that gets one discarded material to a company that wants it, as Avangard and consulting firms do, and ties waste streams to production, rather than landfills, is the next step.
“Anything can be recycled. It’s just a matter of collecting and cost,” Miller said.