Waste management solutions in Commercial Real Estate

Waste management is a messy business. Just ask Tony Soprano. But in commercial real estate (CRE), it doesn’t need to be. Advanced commercial waste management software can track every drop of water and every piece of trash that accumulates in a building’s space throughout the day. 

In an age of stricter commercial regulation in Europe and North America, CRE businesses face pressure from lawmakers and investors to prove that their buildings meet rigorous environmental standards. 

This is not just for the good of the planet; buildings that achieve the highest levels of environmental benchmarking can offer significant savings on operational costs and secure higher rent prices on the open market.  

So how do CRE businesses do it? When it comes to water and waste management, how can your organization optimize collection, disposal, and associated data analytics to ensure regulatory compliance and meet the demands of LEED and other building rating systems?

Controlling waste management in commercial buildings

Before optimizing your business’s waste management, it’s important to understand the fundamental policies any organization should establish before fine-tuning with software solutions.

Waste management is a vital part of any CRE organization’s environmental strategy. Its success and failure will weigh heavily on the business’s ESG goals. 

For commercial office space, you might think of waste management as only the trash and recycling on the office floor, but it’s so much more than that. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 8.5 million tons of office waste go to landfills annually.

Every old computer, printer, or outdated server has to be recycled, and old furniture must be disposed of during refurbishment, or when a space acquires a new tenant. According to Green Standards, the average office cubicle will produce between 135 and 315 kilograms of waste — all of which a CRE organization will be responsible for as part of its Scope 3 emissions. 

To meet ESG goals and manage waste disposal efficiently, CRE organizations are wise to remember the five ‘R’ principles of waste management; they are implemented at all levels to minimize waste output and improve a business’s sustainability record. These principles are:

• Refuse

• Reduce

• Reuse

• Repurpose

• Recycle.

Water and waste management best practices in commercial buildings

While tenants and occupants owe some duty, owners and facility managers ultimately bear the responsibility to ensure their spaces manage waste effectively and sustainably. While this is no doubt a challenging exercise in today’s consumer economy, there are plenty of useful policies a company can implement to take waste management seriously.

It is a good idea to carry out waste audits within your organization. This will allow your teams to identify the types and quantities of waste generated to determine reduction opportunities. The Waste Facilities Audit Association is a Europe-wide organization that helps businesses to better understand their waste production and how to reduce it.

Businesses can also lower their Scope 3 emissions with active and persistent recycling programs. The European Green Office (EGO) recommends that organizations run education and promotion campaigns to help staff and tenants understand the importance of recycling and fostering a culture of sustainability within the building.

The importance of commercial waste management

Effective waste management is necessary not just to mitigate an organization’s environmental impact. In many of the world’s highly-developed economies, waste reduction legislation is far-reaching and places companies under strict regulation to control their output – with prosecution and significant fines if they repeatedly breach rules.

CRE organizations’ waste management policies will be scrutinized when applying for and renewing environmental benchmarks. For example, to achieve LEED certification, all buildings must provide dedicated areas for recycling and ensure provisions for the safe disposal of e-waste. 

Therefore, demonstrating legal compliance will be crucial to achieving building certification and will automatically influence factors like investor confidence, adherence to ESG goals, and meeting decarbonization strategies.  

Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)

The RCRA is the primary federal law that sets out nationwide waste control systems in the U.S. Most CRE businesses will dispose of non-hazardous waste, and will therefore be subject to local commercial rules for collection, disposal, and recycling of trash.

It is important to note that, when acquiring new property, CRE managers will be subject to environmental due diligence rules within the RCRA. These rules obligate organizations to consider the potential impact of waste disposal. For example, it will fall to the developer to safely remove asbestos and other harmful construction materials during a renovation.

Waste Framework Directive

Meanwhile, European businesses are subject to the Waste Framework Directive (WFD) – a piece of EU legislation that has been updated regularly since 1975. While EU member states are welcome to implement tighter rules, the WFD sets out the base guidelines for waste management in Europe.

Safe and clean waste disposal is a priority under the WFD, and businesses must implement measures to reduce waste generation, such as efficient resource usage and waste minimization strategies. Businesses must also comply with recycling quotas and implement systems for collecting and processing recyclable materials.

The best software for commercial waste management

While there isn’t necessarily a ‘market leader’ for software that supports waste management optimization for CRE businesses, there are many industry-leading facilities management platforms. Let’s look at some options to understand how they can support your organization.

ENERGY STAR PortfolioManager

The gold standard of energy efficiency in the U.S.- trusted by more than 40% of Fortune 500 companies – ENERGY STAR’s PortfolioManager suite is ideal for American CRE businesses looking to benchmark their properties and find operational efficiency gains. 

Its management tool allows facilities managers to assess and track changes in water, waste, and energy consumption across a portfolio. A wide variety of waste material categories can be tracked from disposal to collection, including appliances, building materials, and recyclables. 

IBM TRIRIGA 

One of the largest global players in software solutions, and in the game for more than 30 years, IBM’s TRIRIGA integrated workplace management system (IWMS) is designed to support a business’s sustainability efforts throughout the real estate life cycle. 

Its comprehensive environmental data repository aims to improve a business’s operational efficiency by up to 20%, reducing its carbon footprint through optimized consumption and reduced wastage. From hospitals to global real estate organizations, IBM’s suite is ever-present in the global market.

Planon

Another industry-leading platform with a huge global customer base, Planon allows portfolio managers to track a broad range of hard and soft services within their facilities, from HVAC and fire safety to security and landscaping. 

Planon offers modules for waste management, including waste stream analysis, recycling tracking, and disposal management. Businesses can harness this data to maximize their efficiency gains and secure environmental certification.

Archibus by Eptura

A complex IWMS that offers a wide variety of software solutions, from office planning to portfolio-scale building management. Its Waste application helps facilities managers quantify and categorize all types of waste at all stages of the cycle, from generation to disposal. 

The software can flag the effectiveness of recycling programs, analyze them at a portfolio level to identify compliance with key regulations and manage any high-priority waste management tasks such as disposal of hazardous materials.

Streamlining waste management in CRE with ProptechOS

As Europe’s regulatory framework tightens even further with the advent of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), CRE portfolio managers are under more pressure than ever to demonstrate legal compliance to waste management regulations, lower their Scope 3 emissions and ultimately promote corporate sustainability to customers and investors. 

ProptechOS understands this profound challenge in the industry and has produced an integrated suite of property management tools to ensure that you stay ahead in the competitive real estate landscape. 

We know that waste management compliance is a crucial part of demands for building certification; that’s why we created Certify, which automates certificate renewal for leading industry benchmarks by connecting to your business’s infrastructure, including IoT sensors. 

By taking active steps to record and manage waste output, your CRE business can let the data do the work. With our suite of tools on your side, maximizing the operational efficiency of your portfolio has never been easier.

Your CRE business can sign up for a free trial of ProptechOS today.