Companies that distribute food and other items operate on very thin margins. Effectively managing waste & reusable end of life materials has a measurable impact on financial performance.
While distributors generate a significant amount of wood pallets, plastic film, and cardboard, they may also generate food waste, office waste, e-waste, metals, and various other recyclables. Distributors seldom commit their limited resources to specifically managing waste & recycling activities, creating opportunities for inefficiencies, including:
- Reusables or recyclables being discarded in a trash compactor, increasing removal costs.
- Recycling partners downgrading or under reporting recovered materials.
- Underutilized bin capacity, resulting in increased hauling expenses.
There is an adage that you manage what you measure. Increased visibility allows distributors to better manage waste & recycling activities.
How Z3 helps collect and analyze Waste & Recycling Data
Z3’s team has worked with distributors for over 20 years and has a deep understanding of the industry. The depth of experience allows Z3 to provide distribution clients with actionable insights, reducing costs and increasing revenues, while lowering environmental impacts.
Z3 partners with each local distribution location to complete a survey of all end-of-life or byproduct materials the Distributor generates. The list may include:
- municipal waste
- mixed recycling
- wood pallets
- scrap metals
- electronic waste
- office paper
- baled OCC
- plastic film
- food waste
- and many more materials.
After developing a complete waste infrastructure, Z3 compiles and measures historical data. The data is analyzed for trends and audited to ensure compliance with agreements.
Utilizing Zenbi, Z3’s automated data ingestion tool, Z3 efficiently ingests all future data, audits it for accuracy, analyzes it for improvement opportunities, and provides auditable GHG impacts.
When working with Z3, Distribution Centers realize the following benefits:
- Increased accuracy and timeliness of reporting. It is common to identify downgraded recyclable materials that have resulted in a 25% loss in recyclable material revenues.
- Reduction in administrative staff time to process waste data, saving 5-10 hours per month, per site in administrative processing time.
- Opportunity to increase revenues by improving the marketing of surplus commodity recyclable items. Z3 provides the data necessary to competitively bid materials for sale in the future and will help with the bid process.
- The ability to share their waste reduction story with employees, stakeholders, customers, and the community.
The Z3 solution allows distribution clients the opportunity to accurately measure waste and recycling activities, leading to improved financial performance and an opportunity to share your waste reduction story with key stakeholders.
Connect with the Z3 team to explore how we can support your data collection efforts, saving you money.