Making The Connections To Facilitate Responsible Waste Management

Modern societies generate a great deal of trash, and even in the developed world the waste-handling system struggles to deal with it. Only a disappointing fraction of plastic waste is in fact recycled. Landfills in many areas are overwhelmed, and some are starting to refuse certain problematic, high volume categories like mattresses and discarded clothing. Large amounts of food waste and other organic materials end up going to landfills and this leads to emissions of the potent greenhouse gas, methane. So, waste is a complex and challenging problem and significant progress on this front will require implementation of many different mitigation strategies. Waste issues can be broadly divided between those involving various businesses and those associated with the particularly difficult realm waste at the consumer/household level. In the realm of waste generated by businesses there is a company called Quest Resource Management Group whose business model is to optimize the connections between the three waste player categories: generators, collectors/haulers, and processors. Quest is active in a wide range of business sectors and across all of those they deal with over 40,000 source sites and are able to divert 70% of the total volume from their business clients to some better alternative than landfilling. This article will focus on the waste streams that involve organic materials such as food waste which was one of the categories that Quest first addressed when it was founded in 2007. Currently this work is done through a number of waste methodologies within Quest, including a patent pending process called Quest Proganics®, which is currently diverting up to 95% of organic waste away from the landfill.

Many companies generate organic waste including food manufacturers and distributors, grocery retailers and food service entities. The major forms of waste include packaged and unpackaged food, floral items, paper, and waxed cardboard. Greeting cards are also a periodic category of surprising proportions.

Quest works with the businesses who generate these waste categories, generally at multiple sites and often in multiple geographies. Quest takes care of identifying and contracting with the best collectors/haulers for each site and then makes similarly location-specific arrangements for optimal processing. If there is edible food involved it falls to the client company to make any foodbank donations, but beyond that Quest finds destinations for the waste prioritized by the EPA hierarchy for food waste which proceeds from animal feed to anaerobic digestion to composting and only as a last resort to incineration or landfill. For just three of their clients, they collect and recycle over 100,000 tons of organic waste in ways that keep it out of landfills.

Quest’s client companies want to be responsible in terms of their waste disposal, but since that is not the focus of their business, it is better to have those issues managed by experts. The other thing that Quest offers to client companies is detailed data tracking of waste volumes by type paired with details about exactly what happened to it. That data is certainly useful for something like an ESG report or to back up a label claim but is can also alert a client to a problem at one of their locations. For instance, higher than average waste from a grocery store can turn out to be an issue with the temperature in the backroom cooler for fresh produce, meat or dairy items.

The best-case scenario would be that we, as a society, find ways to reduce the amount of waste that is generated. But realistically speaking, waste will continue to be generated and it is then incumbent on those that generate it to deal with it as responsibly as possible in order to recover any residual resource value or to deal with it in a way that minimizes or eliminates environmental impacts. Companies like Quest offer guidance for companies that have those goals.