Home » Sustainability

Grid Waste is Sustainability

Our Goals:

50% more efficient waste removal industry

50% less waste generated in the U.S. in 4 years

What does a 50% more efficient waste removal industry look like? Greater customer density, lower service redundancy, 80-100% container utilization. Fewer trucks, less diesel consumption, less tire consumption, fewer miles driven, lower costs and more profits.

There are over 2,500 waste companies in the US, and tens of thousands of waste removal trucks on the road every day. With 251 million tons of trash and 87 million tons of recycling generated in the US annually, the environmental impact is unfathomable.

Grid Waste is pursuing these goals by getting data, getting it's users great data, and making conducting publicly-available analysis of data from usage statistics and surveys. We're also pursuing these goals by helping push the logistical reorganization of the waste removal industry to improve upon the leading indicators of sustainability in waste removal services. We've outlined a few below.

Sustainability and Transparency

As the old adage goes, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. When it comes to waste disposal, Grid Waste wants to shine new light into our dingy, dusty closets where we've been sweeping our messes out of the way all these years.

Most businesses can't cite any efficiency or sustainability information about their haulers. Here are some basic metrics we think are the leading indicators of hauler sustainability:

1. Route Density

Route Density is the measure of how many customers a hauler has on any given collection route. Generally, the higher the density measurement, the more efficient the route. For example, if truck A drives 10 miles and services 10 customers, while truck B drives 10 miles and services 20 customers, truck B has a higher density of customers on its route.

Route density isn't always better, however. Using the example above, if truck B has several customers that have empty containers when they come by, that's inefficient and the customer may have too many containers or too many pick- ups, or containers that are too large.

Route density can be measured in several ways, and each metric shows a slightly different picture.

Customer Per Route-Mile
Yards Per Route-Mile
Tons Per Route-Mile

Increasing route density is the principle behind Grid Waste's Grouping functionality. When neighbors can group together to work with the same hauler and have their waste collected on similar schedules with the same truck, the hauler's efficiency goes way up, and the cost of service drops significantly.

2. Redundancy Ratio

Density metrics can be contrasted with Redundancy data to show where there are inefficiencies not shown in the density data. For example, a company may have a high route density on a specific route, but also has a large number of customers in that area that are not grouped into that route.

Redundancy can be measured in a few ways:

Customers per square mile/((total routes)/....
total customers/service area in square miles = customers/square mile
truck capacity in customer count
total routes / (total customers / truck capacity in customer count)
(total customers / (customer capacity/truck)) = optimal routes
(actual routes – optimal routes)/optimal routes = redundancy ratio

3.Container Utilization

How full refuse containers are when they are emptied has a big influence on collection efficiency, as does container size. The goal of a waste collection program should be to have the fewest pick-ups possible. The larger a container is, the longer a customer can go without a pick-up (unless other factors, like odor, come into consideration).

Container utilization is measured as an average over time. The metric is simply the % full the container is when it is emptied. Is it 50% full? Or is it 100% full? The best way to increase container utilization rate is to decrease waste pick-ups until the utilization rate is between 80% and 100%. Reducing container size, instead of pick-ups, will also increase the utilization rate, however. This is why it is recommend to start with the largest container that fits the space and can be serviced by a truck.

4. Truck Optimization

Truck optimization figures are similar to route density figures in that they help Illustrate efficiency. Where truck optimization figures vary from route density figures is that they focus on truck capacity, rather than on geographic indicators. A fully optimized truck should be 80-100% full each time it visits the facility to which it delivers it's load. The calculation is simple, and is almost always done in tons, but can be done with cubic yards:

(Full Truck Weight – Empty Truck Weight)/Gross Vehicle Weight {aka GVW}

Truck Optimization is not always the best metric for analyzing efficiency and sustainability. In some scenarios, it makes more sense to empty a truck before it is full rather than wait for it to be full to empty the vehicle. An example of this would be a vehicle that is 25% full doing a route near its facility, that must then go past the facility to visit more customers. It may be more cost effective to drive an empty vehicle to the other customers, and so it would be more efficient to dump the vehicle before continuing on, even though the load is only at 25%. This benefit, of course, must be counterbalanced with the cost of idling and operating time involved in dumping procedures.

5. Fleet and Container Age

Equipment age is an interesting metric from a sustainability perspective, and is handled very differently depending on the type of equipment. With trucks, the more modern a fleet is, the more efficient and environmentally-friendly the vehicles may be, while no sustainability advantage is gained with new refuse containers over old ones unless the old ones are in disrepair and are leaking pollutants.

Fleet Age can be measured several ways. Average fleet age is a common but deceptive metric. A company with a fleet of 2, with one 2014 vehicle and one 1985 vehicle, will have an average fleet age of 14.5 years. If that company only uses the 1985 truck one day a month as a back-up to its new vehicle, this metric can be very misrepresentative of fleet efficiency.

We propose a more complete metric that uses total operating hours per vehicle over an appropriate time span – a minimum of a month and up to a year, with a quarter being an generally appropriate period – where the total operating hours per vehicle are tallied, adding vehicles of the same year together. The result is an understanding of percent of operating time spent spent with vehicles of various years, which can them be used to to get a single-figure Weight-Adjusted Fleet-Age. The calculation looks a bit like this:

((Truck1 Age X Truck1 Hours during period) + (Truck2 Age X Truck2 Hours during period)... (TruckN Age X Truck N Hours during period)) / Total Hours during period.

Weight-Adjusted Fleet Age doesn't do much to look into hauling sustainability. One reason is that fuel efficiency advances aren't linear in nature, and so it would be inaccurate to use the multiple of result from this equation and that year's fuel efficiency data to analyze fleet fuel efficiency. Furthermore, fuel efficiency can vary tremendously based on truck manufacturer, the driver's driving style, and the load the vehicle is carrying. Another reason is that there is a trade-off that is an “apples-to-oranges” comparison between fuel efficiency and the environmental impact associated with manufacturing and disposing of a truck. Fortunately for haulers, the economic impact of that decision is far more straight-forward.

6. Recycling Rate

Many businesses think about their own recycling rate, but few enter the conversation about their hauler's recycling rate. Their hauler's recycling rate can shed light on two very important considerations: one, is the company promoting recycling services versus just providing enough recycling service to quiet customers and regulators, and; two, is the company actually bringing all of their recycling materials to recycling facilities?

A waste company's recycling rate is calculated by dividing the total amount of material recycled in some way (ranging from bottles and cans being recycled to e-waste or food waste composting) divided by the total amount of material handled by the company.

A waste company's recycling rate should be representative of either the nation's mix of non-recyclable and recyclable materials, studied by the US EPA, or representative of the same figure tailored to the specific market the company services, given that there can be significant differences between commercial, industrial, and residential waste generation trends.