My Eco Movie Three

Unwasted: The Future of Doing Business on Earth

Businesses in the US produce around 110 tons of waste produced annually. In 2019, Washington State spent $500 Million on waste disposal, recycling, and composting.

Hobby Douglas, the Vice President of Sustainable Development in General Biodiesel, predicts no waste in nature. When a tree falls, it’s in its life cycle. When a bear or animal eats food and processes it in its body, that’s fertilizer. The human-animal is the only animal to produce waste that cannot process.

Waste products cost cities a lot of money to collect and take that waste to landfills. And this is in no doubt costing the taxpayer. And it’s possible to recycle a good percentage of the trash that we refer to as garbage.

An ideal situation where zero waste is impossible, like in the US in the 1900s; everything was recycled. In 2007, the US exported more than 1.7 million metric tons of rendered products worth over 1 Billion dollars.

Examples of Firms Doing Solid Waste Recycling

• Twenty years of trash from Seattle and Portland is buried at the Columbia Ridge Land Fill in Arlington, Oregon. But, Waste Management is transforming the landfill into an eco-park.
• Together with other firms like Cedar Grove, Waste Management produces gas, electricity, and composite that they later sell back to the community.
• Between 2004 and 2010, the University of Washington increased the recycling rate to 58%, up from 35% to 70% by 2020, saving them $892,007 in 2010 alone.
• The Safeco Field can draw up 45,000 people at any time but requires 1000 people to clean up later.
• The Infectious Disease Research Institute recycles paper towels and Styrofoam to printer cartridges and batteries.

Bottom Line

Businesses are benefiting a lot from solid waste reduction and diversion. Furthermore, companies adopting sustainability enjoy saving some money and enjoying market penetration while helping reduce pollution.