Waste & Recycling

Cascadia managed the field execution of a major metropolitan study of residential waste streams for the City of New York. The team of six sampling crews and four sorting crews collected, characterized, and quantified waste disposed by residents across all five boroughs, allocating more than 4,000 samples into 92 targeted categories over four seasons.

Cascadia worked with the City of Los Angeles to develop their long-term Solid Waste Integrated Resources Plan (SWIRP) by identifying existing and planned public and private infrastructure and services. This work involves:

• Summarizing the city’s current waste management system and solid waste resources facilities;
• Conducting surveys of public and private services to determine disposal rates, tipping fees, contractual arrangements, and existing and planned institutional structures;
• Identifying opportunities for expanding public facilities to enhance overall services and efficiencies;
• Identifying alternative waste diversion methods and opportunities for expansion; and
• Developing generation, disposal, and diversion projections for a 20-year planning period.

This work provided the City with a strategic plan for developing programs, allocating resources, and expanding services toward an updated, more effective city-wide waste management and diversion plan.

Since 2006, Cascadia has managed this comprehensive green business outreach program for Seattle Public Utilities, providing outreach, education, and technical assistance to Seattle businesses to conserve resources, reduce or prevent pollution, and become more sustainable. Resource Venture serves approximately 8,000 local businesses, including restaurants, hotels, office buildings, hospitals, event venues, and more. New in 2012, RV’s “Get On the Map” campaign aims to bring the benefits of sustainability to small, ethnically-owned businesses using community-based outreach and social marketing. http://resourceventure.org/

Cascadia has directed this ongoing study since its inception in 1988, designing sampling plans, overseeing field operations, performing statistical calculations, and producing a range of reporting documents for the City. This work has included the sampling of residential, commercial, self-hauled, construction and demolition, and organic waste streams.

For CalRecycle, Cascadia led the development of an online calculator for businesses and institutions across the state of California to evaluate the financial, diversion, and greenhouse gas benefits associated with various waste reduction and recycling strategies. www.calrecycle.ca.gov/climate/Calculator/default.htm

In an effort to plan strategically in the face of changing producer responsibility systems, Metro’s Hazardous Waste Program commissioned Cascadia to develop an effective and action-ready strategy for the evolution of Metro’s HHW collection operations. Through detailed research and analysis, Cascadia is working to provide Metro with the guidance it needs to both influence and adapt to a future with more extensive and effective producer responsibility systems. Download project documents here and here.

Cascadia has developed a customized, centrally-hosted Eco-Diversion™ Calculator to facilitate meaningful outreach to businesses and institutions. Providing access to over $2 million worth of industry waste data collected and analyzed by Cascadia staff, the tool is designed to be used with hand-held devices to provide decision-makers with reliable estimates of the financial, diversion, and greenhouse-gas benefits associated with various diversion actions. Click here to download a brochure about the tool and here to download a sample report generated by the calculator.

Cascadia provides outreach and technical assistance for the StopWaste.Org Business Partnership program, utilizing a multilingual team and our EcoDiversion Calculator to support the diversity of business needs in Alameda County while ensuring the program maximizes diversion at the least possible cost. Each year, the program aims to engage more than 300 medium and large commercial generators in establishing or expanding diversion programs, and to recruit and train at least 40 high food scraps/organics businesses to begin diverting organics. www.stopwaste.org/home/index.asp

The Washington Materials Management and Financing Authority (WMMFA) is aproducer-led, not-for-profit stewardship organization responsible for implementing a state-mandated electronics recycling program. Cascadia helped the Authority develop a Standard Plan to build an effective and efficient producer-funded electronics recycling system in Washington. The Plan included management systems to ensure contractor compliance with collection and recycling standards; reporting systems to track the numbers and brands of electronics collected; a financing plan for fair compensation of contractors; a communications strategy; and a menu of potential mechanisms to address financial assurance and environmental liability risk. To demonstrate each recycling system’s compliance with geographic distribution requirements, Cascadia developed a database of collectors, transporters, and processors, and used GIS to map their locations. The Plan is currently being implemented by electronics producers and retailers throughout Washington State. Cascadia also facilitated a public input session regarding the Plan.

Cascadia is working with the VF Corporation, the world’s largest apparel company, to reduce waste at its facilities across the global enterprise. During the first phase of the project, we are surveying facilities to create a comprehensive global baseline of operational waste and identify opportunities to increase diversion, reduce waste, and save money.

On behalf of King County and the Northwest Product Stewardship Council (NWPSC), Cascadia conducted an analysis of the method, infrastructure, and economic impacts of leftover paint management in Washington State under the current government-financed system and under a proposed product stewardship program. Through primary and secondary research and in-depth data analysis, Cascadia and project partner DSM Environmental developed state-level economic models of the existing and proposed systems, and compared the outcomes to assess the potential cost savings, system efficiencies, jobs created and other benefits that could result from a product stewardship program for managing paint in Washington State.

Cascadia has provided waste auditing services to Starbucks Coffee Company since 2002. To assist in waste reduction and planning as well as providing data for the annual CSR Report, Cascadia studied the wastes generated by Starbucks stores in 2002 and 2005. Results were used to develop diversion programs, reduce waste, and report efforts in the annual Starbucks Corporate Social Responsibility Report. In addition to this work, in 2007 Cascadia provided an audit of waste from the Starbucks Center to satisfy the requirements of the LEED-Existing Building (EB) waste audit. Building on the results of the waste audit, Cascadia evaluated and recommended opportunities for reducing waste through source reduction, reuse, and recycling. The Starbucks Center was able to obtain a LEED-EB Gold rating in 2007.

 In 2004, New York City launched a comprehensive update to its 1990 citywide waste composition study. This update included two phases: a preliminary study to obtain draft composition data that was needed for near-term use, and a full-blown annual study to expand upon and validate the findings of the preliminary study. Cascadia served as a key subcontractor on this project, which characterized and quantified waste generated in all five boroughs in New York City. Cascadia was awarded a second contract with the City of New York in late 2011 to conduct a citywide characterization study in 2012 and 2013.

Since 1999, Cascadia has designed and implemented three statewide characterization studies for CalRecycle. For the first study, Cascadia surveyed haulers, businesses, and multifamily representatives to determine the amounts and composition of waste from five generating sectors. For the second study, Cascadia conducted research to determine geographic disposal patterns across five regions of the state. The third study entailed characterizing specific waste streams from four areas of focus that were identified during the second study as containing relatively large amounts of recoverable material. These studies provided fundamental data that is used throughout California to design diversion strategies.

Waste Management enlisted the outreach expertise of Cascadia to help conduct waste reduction and recycling outreach to all 1,200 commercial customers within a six week period to meet City of Federal Way contract requirements. Cascadia recruited and trained outreach specialists, mapped out the commercial account list, compiled and developed program outreach material and developed an audit tool to facilitate more efficient commercial outreach. This outreach tool automatically draws from hauler waste account records, minimizing the data entry effort required by outreach staff and efficiently creates recommendations and calculates cost savings, tonnage reductions, and greenhouse gas savings from a single waste reduction and recycling site visit. It compiles useful reports for the business assisted and for the service provider, while streamlining information that the outreach staff need to communicate on site with the business. With Cascadia acting as program coordinator, the outreach specialists conducted site visits to all 1,200 waste account holders and provided customers with estimated cost savings associated with improved recycling, tips on increasing recycling, recommendations on container needs, and a list of actionable next steps. Outreach specialists also provided customers with posters, brochures, and a customized sheet with service level recommendations and a waste and recycling checklist. Over one third of businesses visited in the six week period signed up for new or expanded recycling services.

 Shifting from a downstream focus on waste, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has adopted a more holistic, systems based approach to materials management—covering raw materials extraction and manufacturing, through consumption and use, to end-of-life management. To move this objective forward, DEQ commissioned Cascadia to facilitate a diverse set of stakeholders in charting a bold future vision of success for materials management in Oregon for 2050.The vision and framework for action developed through this process will lay the groundwork for a transformation of Oregon’s Integrated Resource and Solid Waste Management Plan. Cascadia created an inclusive and collaborative process so that the resulting vision and framework will be shared by agency staff members and key public, business, and community stakeholders. The vision and framework for action were released for public comment in Summer 2012. In December 2012 the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission voted unanimously to adopt the plan and vision.

In 2012, the Oregon Metro Recycle at Work (RAW) program hired Cascadia for help developing measures and targets to track progress on its new goals and objectives, as
follow up work to Cascadia’s comprehensive program evaluation in 2009. Cascadia
developed measurement options and conducted one-on-one interviews and facilitated six workshops with Metro and its five partner jurisdictions to select a concise set of measures. Cascadia worked extensively with participants outside of workshops to gather participant input, fully address group questions and comments, ensure that group time focused on decision-making, and build group support for the measures.

In 2009, Seattle Public Utilities received a Coordinated Prevention grant from the Department of Ecology to expand the base and scope of site-specific multi-family property volunteers (formerly called Friends of Recycling) to address the addition of organics collection service. To meet this need, Cascadia designed a suite of creative approaches for recruiting multi-family properties and conducting outreach and volunteer trainings, with the dual goals of signing up more multi-family properties for food collection service in limited-English-speaking communities and attracting more individuals to be Friends of Recycling and Composting volunteer stewards. In addition to designing and presenting the training approach and curriculum, Cascadia helped develop tools and resources to help the City move toward a successful multi-family composting program.

Cascadia conducted international case study research and coordinated regional field studies to inform the development and implementation of innovative multifamily recycling pilot projects by identifying unique strategies that have achieved measurable improvements globally, and using social marketing research techniques to study the specific recycling opportunities locally. In 2013, Cascadia is partnering with Waste Management and local Seattle area governments to design, implement, and evaluate several of the highest potential multifamily pilot projects. The results will provide insights for developing more mature recycling programs for this underserved sector, particularly where resident demographics are diverse. Cascadia’s work is also contributing to a research effort led by the Washington State Recycling Association that aims to identify best practices for improving outcomes in Washington and throughout the Western U.S.