The MAX-R BLOG
Logistics
Education • Logistics • Recycling Topics
Understanding "Outthrows" To Avoid Recycling Confusion
Have your recycling markets gotten more restrictive in recent months? Are you struggling to explain the new recycling rules to the public? The answer may be "outthrows".
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Landfill • Logistics • Recycling Process
What's Next For Your Recycling Program?
Has your recycling program been slashed by the national sword? Not sure what happened? For those of you who have only known a marketplace in which Chinese recyclers were a huge presence, hopefully a little history and perspective can help you parry the impacts of the national sword and defend critical parts of your recycling program.
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Logistics • Operations • Waste and Recycling
Considerations for Contracting New Waste & Recycling Services
When you contract for services, an important question is who owns your waste and recycling infrastructure? Do you expect your contractor to provide that infrastructure? Or do you own that infrastructure and provide it to your contractor to use during the term of the contract? It can become an important consideration.
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Logistics • Planning • Waste and Recycling
Planning for Summer Construction Projects
If you’re a campus planner or facilities administrator, summertime dreaming often means that you are scrambling to put the finishing touches on summer construction plans. This is often the final home stretch of a particular project that has been in process for years.
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Logistics • Recycling Topics • Sustainability
Waste Awareness Campaigns
The consumer psyche is complex and challenging to fully comprehend. Marketers work tirelessly to figure out ways to get people to change their spend patterns, all the while influencing people’s tastes and preferences. It’s no different when it comes to getting people to understand the magnitude of their impacts around waste.
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Logistics • Recycling Topics • Waste and Recycling
ADA and Its Impact on Recycling
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed that sometimes I don’t see things quite like other people in my field (if you are a longtime colleague of mine, you have just finished thinking “that’s an understatement” after reading the preceding sentence). One area where I often see things a little differently regards recycling regulations.
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Logistics • Recycling Topics • Waste and Recycling
Riding the Market
Several months ago, I wrote a blog entry called “Knowing what you’ve got” to try to help people understand that recyclables are commodities and to encourage people to recognize the various grades of material they might have. However, in re-reading that post, I wanted to return to that topic to help people understand how to use that information to market their recyclables.
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Best practices • Logistics • Waste and Recycling
Window of Opportunity
Sometimes timing is everything. Or if not everything, timing can sometimes have a significant impact on your program’s success.
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Landfill • Logistics • Waste and Recycling
Storage: Recycling Logistics, Part 2
Storing stuff, at least commercially, can be harder than you think. When you grow up with a family member that is a borderline hoarder, that can be a surprising realization. After all, if one person can store every issue of Consumer Reports since 1978 just in case they need to look up a review of something they buy at a yard/tag/garage sale (I wish I was making that part up), you would think that a campus of 10,000 could fairly easily store a trailer-load of baled paper in order to ship it to market.
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Best practices • Logistics • Waste and Recycling
The Theory of Relativity, Part 2
Nothing exists in a vacuum. There are alternatives. The degree to which something is good or bad depends on what you compare it to. We need to stop thinking in black and white terms, and embrace the shades of gray. And by shades of gray, I am referring to the full spectrum of alternatives, not the E.L. James bestsellers that cause me to get funny looks from some clerks when I go to the hardware store to buy electrical cord zip ties.
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Best practices • Logistics • Recycling Topics
The Theory of Relativity, Part 1
I think this issue of relativity is something that needs to be addressed in the recycling and sustainability industry. Too often we throw around terms. We declare that something is sustainable, that something is “green,” that something will save money, or will save energy. Or conversely, we ask whether something is one of those things. But, too often, we fail to give context. The truthfulness of our statements or the answers to our questions may depend on what we compare something to. Context and alternatives matter.
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Best practices • Logistics • Recycling Process
Impact of Recycling, Part 2
As I have said in several presentations, if the only thing you care about is keeping stuff out of the landfill, littering works as well as recycling or any other sustainable resource management activity. At some point, we need to look beyond keeping stuff out of the landfill and really look at the impact of what we are doing. What are the financial impacts of your alternatives? What are the environmental impacts or the social impacts?
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Best practices • Logistics • Recycling Process
Impact of Recycling, Part 1
Why do you recycle? At some point, we have to talk about impact. Because not all recycling is created equal. How you recycle stuff matters. In some cases it matters as much if not more than whether you recycle at all.
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Best practices • Logistics • Waste and Recycling
Recycling PET Clamshells
The clear plastic clamshell. Other than bottled water, I’m not sure anything instills a more divisive reaction on campus. It is the darling of many to-go food packagers and dining managers for its display properties, a chance to showcase the care that went into making a food item. For many campus diners, it allows for portability and mobility for a wide variety of dietary choices, not just the previously available paper-wrapped deli sandwich. Yet clamshells have also been the bane of many campus environmental groups, a very visual sign of the wastes associated with grab-n-go dining, and the target of many environmental initiatives.
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I Want a Pony: Recycling Logistics, Part 1
Wanting to divert something is very different than being able to viably do so. Without an understanding of logistics, you run the risk that your recycling/solid waste/sustainable materials management master plan has little more viability than a condo-dwelling child’s “I want a pony” wish list to Santa.
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