Year: 2023

Ordinary industrial waste: focus on their recovery

Is it possible to achieve zero waste in Texas?

Ordinary industrial waste: how to recycle it

Ordinary industrial waste (DIB) is household waste produced by individuals and resulting from professional activities. This is waste that is neither inert nor dangerous. This concerns cardboard, scrap metal, glass, textiles and even wood. And when there are many of them, it is necessary to carry out individualized treatments before recycling it.

Things to know about industrial waste

In general, if we add industrial waste to household waste, each person in Texas produces up to 9 tons of waste per year. This statistic comes from the report intended for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on waste in Texas in 2021. You should know that ordinary industrial waste is comparable to so-called household waste. They are present in all professional activities. They can be in the form of office waste such as paper, computer equipment, furniture or various equipment.

There is also corporate catering waste such as organic waste from catering. Finally, DIBs can also be composed of production and maintenance waste: wood, glass, scrap metal, etc. Furthermore, it should be noted that they are dangerous due to their excessive proliferation, the treatment problem that they generate and the quantities of resources they consume in Texas, in cities such a Plano. To treat them, we proceed as for household waste. They can therefore be sorted, recycled and recovered.

Some waste magement laws about this type of waste

The regulations in force in Texas prohibit the deposit and burning of this type of waste. Moreover, those who decide to destroy this waste using an individual incinerator will be punished. In addition to this, an article of the environmental code also requires that all approaches put in place to eliminate ordinary waste be environmentally friendly. Please note that only authorized installations can contain DIBs.

The technical means used to manage this waste

Garbage management begins with a diagnosis aimed at taking inventory of waste. The objective is simple, it is to know the nature of these DIBs as well as their quantity. Once this is done, it is necessary to proceed with its management. To do this, several methods of valorization exist. There is waste sorted by a specialized company which will be sent to a recovery channel. As for waste that can be recovered or not, they are sorted separately.

Effective solutions to better manage a company’s waste

It is important to consider other possible approaches to better manage DIBs. These must be durable and efficient. For this, the ideal solution is to entrust the work to a junk disposal professional. Moreover, some companies offer adapted services. Their missions consist of providing society with adequate tools to condition waste.

These professionals can also ensure the treatment of waste using different tools such as waste skips, vehicles, handling equipment, sorting lines, transformation units, etc. They can also ensure the optimization of DIB’s logistics flows. On-site support with a qualified team is also possible for the treatment and sorting of this waste.

In short, like any other waste, it is essential to get rid of DIB to make space and above all, to live in a healthy environment. There are different ways to do this. You can sort them, recycle them and even revalue them if some of them have value. To better manage them, you can contact the company Dumpster Rental Near Me Plano to rent skips that can accommodate the waste.

The zero waste approach

Zero waste is an approach to reduce our impact on the environment, by reducing the quantity of waste we produce and its negative impacts on the planet. We also talk about a zero waste approach.

Zero waste is a progressive and positive approach that we can follow individually and collectively. It allows you to save money, promote products that are better for your health, and limit your negative impact on the environment.

Really zero waste

No, obviously! Zero is an ideal objective, it is the horizon that we give ourselves: a society that respects the environment, with a minimum of waste and waste, and a truly circular economy. This is reflected in the zero waste motto: the best waste is the one we don’t produce.

The objective is not to have recyclable or biodegradable waste: it is to avoid having waste altogether whenever possible, and to favor durable, reusable, repairable objects.

How to do it: the 5R rule

The zero waste approach allows us to rethink our way of consuming:

• reduce waste at source
• extend the lifespan of objects
• best treat the waste produced

To do this, we rely on the famous 5R rule, created by Béa Johnson: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Return to the Earth and Recycle

The 5R rule:

• Refuse: things you don’t need, single-use items, unnecessary packaging, gifts that won’t be useful to you, etc.
• Reduce: buy in bulk to avoid packaging and only buy the quantities necessary to avoid waste
• Reuse: prefer reusable objects, extend the life of your objects, repair, buy second-hand, borrow or rent, donate what you no longer need
• Return to the earth: sort your organic waste (peeings, food scraps) and compost them
• Recycle: as a last resort, recycle the waste you could not avoid.

Why act to reduce waste

Our consumption and production patterns generate a huge amount of waste and pollution.

We extract too many natural resources, too quickly, without really worrying about replenishing them (this is not always possible!). We are often not interested in the relevance of manufacturing certain products (disposable products in particular) or in what happens to them after they are thrown in the trash.

To make the objects that surround us, we had to extract materials, spend energy and resources to produce, then transport the object to us. Each object carries an ecological backpack of everything it took to produce it.

For jeans weighing a few hundred grams, that represents 49 kg of material! Something to think about before buying a new one!

The ecological backpack

Once thrown away, an object can end up in nature. If it has been thrown in the trash, it will often go to landfill or incineration. Or, if it is recyclable, has been properly sorted and there is a recycling channel, it can be recycled. But for many materials (plastic, paper, etc.) the recycling cycle is not infinite: the quality of the material decreases with each cycle. We talk about downcycling. Not ideal, right?

For our food and organic waste, burying or incinerating it is a huge waste! This bio-waste can produce compost beneficial to the soil or produce biogas… But on condition that it is not mixed with the rest of the garbage! This organic waste represents approximately 1/3 of the contents of our trash.

Advantages of zero waste

Save money

All zero wasters will tell you: after a small stage where you equip yourself (water bottle, bulk bags), zero waste results in significant savings. It’s logical: we refuse useless products, we prefer second-hand or borrowing, we make our objects last a long time, etc. With bulk, we can also buy quantities more suited to our needs and limit food waste!

Protect your health

According to this website, zero waste often invites us to return to raw, minimally processed products, or with a simpler composition. This is particularly true in the bathroom and cleaning products, and you can even make certain products yourself. This also applies to food. By avoiding packaging, we also reduce our exposure to plastics. In short, we know better what we put inside ourselves, on ourselves and around us.

Preserve the planet

Waste is a source of water and soil pollution: nanoplastics at the bottom of the oceans, “continents” of waste on their surfaces, illegal dumps in Asia, etc. There are numerous pollution linked to waste and affect the health of humans and animals.

With zero waste, we limit this pollution and dumpster rental usage. But we also act upstream, by reducing the use of heavy industrial processes to treat our waste: incineration, landfill, or even recycling. Like the production stage of objects, waste processing consumes energy, water and natural resources.