A big part of our mission here at Intermarket is reducing costs for our customers by reducing superfluous consumption. We control CAMs by reducing energy waste and using our building systems more efficiently. We reduce our carbon footprint by reducing water deliveries and going to filtration systems. We reduce TI costs by recycling our doors. We reduce administrative expenses by printing on both sides of the paper here in our office and recycling old paper from old files that we don't need anymore. These efficiencies are passed on directly to our tenants in the form of property improvement projects, lower operating costs and more competitive lease rates which deliver the best overall value in our sub-market.
I recently learned about how this can be done on a much larger scale...with garbage. Literally.
Like most people, I rarely gave any thought whatsoever to the waste I produced everyday. In fact, in 90% of my daily activity, I often didn’t know that I was producing waste at all. For example, we often get our groceries bagged in plastic or paper bags only to throw them away or use them for trash for something else like food waste. This trend seems to be bucking, however, as we see more and more reusable grocery bags everyday. In the office, simply taking paper that has been printed on one side and recycling it through the printer to print on the other side will literally cut your paper consumption in half.
Trash does have an upside though. Every year, we generate more than 250 million tons of garbage here in the US. This waste helps to fuel (literally and figuratively) a $52 billion/year industry. This trash is trucked off to landfills which have proven to be modern engineering marvels in and of themselves. The decomposing garbage creates Methane and Lechate gas. This gas is harvested using gas wells in the landfill. The methane gas is then burned to create steam and spine turbines to generate electricity. At the BMW Plant in South Carolina, the entire factory is powered by a Waste Management Landfill producing methane gas for steam turbines. The plant is literally powered by trash.1
The largest landfills, which cost over $1 million/acre to construct, can produce enough gas to power over one million homes per year! This saves us about 13 million barrels of oil per year.2
So, the next time you go to hit the print button, I would encourage you to think PDF first. We have to start somewhere, but every little bit helps.
For a detailed look at our trash problems and how we can do our part to reduce waste in general, check out this CNBC Special Report called “TRASH INC – THE SECRET LIFE OF GARBAGE.”
Citations and References:
1 “Trash Inc. – The Secret Life of Garbage” CNBC, 2010: http://www.cnbc.com/id/38830389
2 “Trash Inc. – The Secret Life of Garbage” CNBC, 2010: http://www.cnbc.com/id/38830389
