Resourceful Thinking

Brian Taylor

Shifting to an entirely new business strategy is not something most business owners or boards of directors are eager to try. One need look no further than the publishing industry—where some organizations have done better than others at communicating beyond ink on paper—to observe the risks.

There are similar scenarios playing out in the well-established municipal solid waste landfilling sector. Owners of landfills have grown accustomed to a set of practices, procedures and contracts that result in solid waste being picked up with the express purpose of bringing it to their landfills.

This model has been challenged on several fronts before. Curbside recycling programs, “mass burn” waste-to-energy plants, composting programs and green waste chipping and mulching operations have all been deployed in the previous decades as ways to divert some materials from the landfill.

In prior decades, however, drastically scaling back or eliminating the role of landfills was usually deemed more theoretical than practical.

As of 2012, the notion of what might be practical when it comes to landfill diversion has shifted quickly. Even one of the nation’s largest owners of landfills, Houston-based Waste Management Inc., has appointed a chief strategy officer to its senior leadership team whose role will include “growing the company through extracting value from the materials it handles [and] with nontraditional solutions.”

At a golf tournament the company sponsors, Waste Management launched its Zero Waste Challenge, which it calls “an initiative aimed at educating vendors and patrons about proper disposal of waste, so that eventually zero waste is sent to the landfill.”

At a roundtable discussion held in coordination with WasteExpo in April in Las Vegas, Waste Management Managing Director of the Organic Growth Group Joe Vaillancourt remarked that additional recycling and waste-from-energy methods will be among the techniques used to move toward this goal.

Vaillancourt was among eight energy-from-waste industry leaders who took part in the roundtable, which featured points of view on how this sector has evolved and thoughts on where it might be heading in the near future.

For those with an interest in the fraction of discarded materials that is becoming a resource not for its recycling value, but rather for its carbon value, please be aware that the Recycling Today Media Group has launched Renewable Energy from Waste magazine (www.REWmag.com).

A full recap of the waste-from-energy roundtable discussion will appear in the next two issues. If you’d like to stay in touch with developments in this sector, please go to www.REWmag.com to subscribe to the print or digital edition of Renewable Energy from Waste.