A “good” recycling and waste management company will inherently include a thorough analysis and discovery process. One of the first things a “good” management company will do is collect 6-12 months of historical waste and recycling data from its haulers. Why? Not only do they need to understand the types of services, containers, service frequencies, tonnages, etc., that their locations have, but they also need to understand how the service needs of their location change over the course of a year. Having a picture of today or the last few months does not tell the whole story. If you can’t see the whole picture, it obviously ends up being a lot of guesswork. A “good” management company will want to eliminate the guesswork.

Acquiring waste and recycling data for each location will tell a good part of the story, but a “good” management company goes the extra mile. They will want to discover as much information as possible so that they can truly provide an “evidence-based” plan to maximize cost reductions, recycling opportunities, and environmental sustainability. They will work “with” their customer to determine the best metrics to use in measuring waste and recycling performance for each location. They will use the size / square footage / number of employees at each location etc, but will also work with their client to determine other “key” metrics. For example, a key metric for a hotel chain might be “occupancy”, or for a restaurant chain it might be “generated sales.” You get the idea. The management company will use this information to develop a “matrix” that compares the waste and recycling service with the chosen criteria. This “matrix” will help identify “red flags” and provide evidence to determine the best course of action. For example, a “red flag” will identify when 2 locations with the same metrics have a significant variance in the amount of waste and recycling service they have. The management company will need to investigate to determine if one of these locations is over-serviced (paying for unnecessary service).

You would be surprised how many “so-called” management companies do not develop an “evidence-based” approach. Your approach can range from guesswork to trial and error. This can be costly as these approaches can take a long time to see the proposed benefit, never justifying the service levels compared to your other locations. Not to mention the billing nightmare that multiple changes can cause. Additionally, repeated changes in service types, service levels, etc. can be a burden on location managers for the amount of time they have to spend working on waste and recycling. Guesswork is never the most financially or time-efficient approach. A lot can be said about whether a management company is “good” or not, no matter how thorough its analysis and discovery process is. You may want to know your approach in advance.