What began in 2015 as a waste audit that revealed high-generation of compostable material has led to a multi-year, multi-project implementation plan to collect compostable material from buildings across Argonne National Laboratory’s campus. Argonne’s commitment has diverted over 65 tons from the landfill since 2018, which has helped them meet their federally-mandated performance goal of 50% diversion for non-hazardous wastes.
In order to characterize the types of waste, ISTC’s applied scientists collected over 7,000 pounds of landfill and recycling-bound materials from eight representative campus buildings and sorted it into 23 material categories over a 10-day sampling period. The audit revealed that 43% (by weight) of the materials in Argonne’s landfill stream were compostable. Based on these findings, Argonne and ISTC collaborated to develop and execute an organics collection implementation plan for the campus.