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— Property Management Quarterly — August 2015
R
ecycling is broken. That was
the consensus earlier this
month at the U.S. Waste Expo
in Las Vegas, voiced at the
“Heavy Hitters Roundtable,” a
public discussion among the CEOs of
some of the largest waste companies
in the world.
“This is a crisis,” said David Steiner,
Waste Management CEO. “We’ve
invested zero (in recycling) the last
two and a half years.”
On some levels, Steiner’s frustration
is understandable, as recycled com-
modity values have been depressed
for several years. However, some
property managers in Colorado may
disagree with this statement based
on the waste diversion requests
they’re receiving.
Another reason for the panic is that
the recycling stream has changed.
Plastic and aluminum container
manufacturers are creating thinner,
lighter containers, which are worth
less. Newspaper, which once made
up the greatest percentage of the
recycled stream and represents a
higher value by weight than many
recyclables, has all but evaporated
from the stream. Finally, plastics,
which are petroleum-based products,
have seen their value deteriorate in
lock step with oil prices. As a com-
modity, recycling definitely has seen
better days.
The disconnect here, however, is
that Steiner and his peers see the
waste and recycling industry as a
commoditized one. I’ve always main-
tained that our industry is customer
driven, not commodity driven. Hav-
ing been in the industry for almost
20 years, the one constant I observe
is the customers’
continued growing
demand for waste
diversion. If you
believe sustain-
ability trends are
going to continue
in our country, it
seems inevitable
that demand for
waste diversion will
as well.
In Colorado the
appetite for waste
diversion is most
evident with the recent dramatic
growth in organics waste collection.
Organics, or food and green waste,
currently is used to create compost,
a beneficial rich, soil-like product.
Grocery stores, restaurants, food
manufacturers and office buildings
with cafeterias aggressively added
organics collection to their waste
services. For our company, organics
is by far the fastest-growing segment,
doubling in volume since February. By
this fall, we anticipate that organics
will make up approximately 12 per-
cent of our total collection operations,
up from about 3 percent a year ago.
Additionally, this dramatic growth
is occurring despite the fact that
organics collection often is more
expensive than waste removal ser-
vices. That type of growth, in spite of
a great cost, is a great argument in
favor of continued consumer support
of waste diversion.
Perhaps the most exciting thing on
the horizon for advancing organics
diversion and, in fact, waste diver-
John Griffith
CEO, Alpine Waste
& Recycling,
Commerce City
Sustainability
Photos courtesy Alpine Waste & Recycling
A tub grinder at Alpine Waste & Recycling’s compost facility near Bennett handles the
wood and green material that is a crucial component of composting.
A compost pile is “baking” at 156 degrees, which is another critical step in the creation
of compost material.
