Fact Sheet: Why Reduce Waste?

Office of Waste Reduction Services
State of Michigan
Departments of Commerce and Natural Resources

December 1989
#8901A

Once, it was inexpensive and easy to dispose of waste. Today, your business, like thousands of other businesses across Michigan, has discovered that waste disposal is far from cheap. It is no longer easy or cheap to dispose of the six million tons of solid waste businesses generate each year, half of the state's total solid waste volume. Businesses pay hundreds of millions of dollars for disposal alone * a price tag which is quickly escalating as the state's remaining landfill space dwindles. Waste reduction is a better option for your business for two primary reasons:

Reducing waste makes good economic sense, good ecological sense and, increasingly, good business sense.

First: Waste Is Costly

Michigan's businesses create two types of physical outputs:

Products create revenues. Waste creates costs - costs which adversely affect profits.

Businesses incur a variety of waste-related costs. These costs include:

Removal Costs Businesses frequently pay $ 50 - $ 150 per ton to collect, haul and dispose of waste.

Collection Costs. Waste must be collected and stored. Maintenance personnel spend as much as 25 percent of their time collecting waste. Storing waste requires containers, compacting equipment and the use of valuable floor or dock space.

Hauling Costs. Waste must be transported from the business to the disposal location. These costs have increased significantly in many areas as landfill closings have forced haulers to go to more distant facilities.

Disposal Costs. Waste must be disposed of (mostly landfilled). In many areas, landfill "tip fees" have risen dramatically as remaining landfill space has decreased.

Production Costs Waste is a clear indicator of incomplete usage of resources. Waste means that raw materials are being paid for, but not used.

Liability Costs Businesses which create waste, particularly hazardous waste, are increasingly liable for environmental problems that waste might cause. They are paying higher insurance and higher damage premiums. While disposal facilities are more closely regulated now than in the past, waste has the potential to come back to haunt a business should groundwater contamination occur.

Lost Resource Costs Most business waste is composed of materials which can be profitably reused, recycled, or composted. Throwing these resources away is often like throwing out a new source of revenues. It is also not uncommon to find businesses discarding perfectly good items which they then buy "new" from someone else.

Social Costs Waste hurts business as it adversely affects the greater community:

  1. Decreasing landfill space increases waste costs for everyone, competitors and customers alike.
  2. Millions of dollars are being spent to clean up groundwater around leaking landfills and for the health problems which result from contaminated drinking water.
  3. Landfills require large tracts of land which could otherwise be used for farming, business, recreation or housing.

As the public spends more on waste, they spend less for goods and services produced by Michigan businesses.

Second: Waste Reduction Prepares For The Future

In the 1990s, America must shift from a "disposable" society toward a "waste-conscious" society. This transition, forced by the rapidly growing financial and environmental problems of waste, will have a profound effect on how goods are designed, produced, distributed, sold and used.

The evidence of this shift is already apparent. The costs of "doing nothing" are escalating and will soon become prohibitive. These rising costs are ensured by strict environmental standards for landfills and the growing unwillingness of communities to allow waste disposal "in their backyard".

As the public learns more about the state of the environment, demands for recycling and for "environmentally sound" production methods and products are growing:

Recent polls by the Gallup organization and the National Solid Waste Management Association found that of those citizens surveyed:

Some businesses are responding to the opportunities of this trend. They are providing products with more recycled materials and fewer "virgin" materials and identifying these products with recycling symbols, thereby creating an "environmentally friendly" image for themselves and their products.

Waste reduction will become part of doing business in the 1990s, much as workplace and product safety became part of doing business in the 1960s and 70s. The combination of escalating waste costs and changing public demands will make waste reduction a competitive necessity. Get Ready!

Buy Recycled Products.
They're Worth Our Environment

Developed by:

Resource Recycling Systems, Inc.

Funded by:

The Clean Michigan Fund
Michigan Department of Natural Resources

For more information on the subject of waste reduction for businesses, contact:

The Office of Waste Reduction Services
P.O. Box 30004
Lansing, MI 48909
(517) 335-1178


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Last Updated: November 10, 1995