Reconomy launches Zerowasteometer to aid climate change fight
Waste management services business Reconomy has launched a new tool to help organisations plot a path towards zero waste while aligning it to their impact on climate change.
The firm has developed the Zerowasteometer to quantify an organisation’s various types of waste management procedures in a bid to support businesses which are working towards the Zero Waste International Alliance targets — that is diverting more than 90% of all discarded resources from landfill and incineration.
Reconomy’s Zerowasteometer will attribute a positive figure (associated with reuse and recycling processes) or a negative (landfill and incineration / energy from waste) figure to each waste management style and plot the performance on an easy-to-understand tachometer and dashboard.
As the tool is normalised to use the same indices irrespective of volume, users can input and aggregate data for multiple sites and better understand performance over their entire estate. In doing so, they can identify areas of opportunity or poor performance and develop a clear roadmap, with measurement points, to ensure progress.
Nathan Gray, Head of Sustainability at Reconomy comments: “We are delighted to share with everyone our open source Zerowasteometer tool which is one of the first out there to give organisations a simple picture of where they are on their zero-waste journey, and what they need to think about to drive it forward.
“We have worked with Let’s Recycle to launch this tool alongside their Zero Waste Awards which helps recognise those businesses that have made progress toward zero waste as part of their sustainability strategy. Resource management has such an important role in the overall context of reducing carbon emissions and as we build back from the impact of the pandemic, many organisations are redoubling their efforts and setting out ambitious targets for the years ahead.”
Reconomy’s Zerowasteometer supports the legal requirements for environmental reporting that came into effect on 1st April 2019 under Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR), and supports recommendations made by The Taskforce for Climate and Financial Disclosure (TCFD).
For qualifying organisations, the obligations require them to measure their waste so that it can be reduced and managed more sustainably in line with reducing carbon emissions. This means using the waste hierarchy to measure types of wastes, volumes being produced, their disposal routes and end destinations.
The Zerowasteometer tool even provides users with a projection on their current climate change impact, with actions and a proposed trajectory indication based on the figures entered. If all waste is recycled this results in a + 1°C trajectory and conversely if everything is either burnt or buried a +3°C path is observed. Middle of the road performance is regarded as being between 2-2.5 degrees.
Access to this information and a broader climate change context can play an important role in elevating strategic discussions relating to waste, circular economy principles, and resources up the corporate agenda.
In addition to the obvious environmental benefits, improved resource efficiency is also proven to realise a significant financial gain with potential cost savings that can equate to one per cent of turnover through proven waste minimisation initiatives.
The Reconomy Zerowasteometer is the first step on the journey towards Net Zero by 2050 and is available at www.reconomy.com/zerowasteometer/
