Optimizing Your Waste Stream to Reduce Man Hours

There are generally two reasons an organization will seek us out to provide them with a trash compactor rental. The first is the most common; they have so much waste that they would need to pay the refuse company to haul their trash every day, so compacting the trash reduces the hauls and thereby reduces cost. The second reason is the working hours. This reason is harder to quantify but deserves careful examination. In a one hundred thousand square foot manufacturing facility, having an individual walk across the facility to dispose of one bag of trash poses several issues. One, the worker is using the time to dispose of waste rather than whatever revenue-generating activity only they can do. Two, the worker is adding to the traffic across your facility, a potential safety issue. Three, moving such a small volume of trash is a task that has little return because the job will need to be completed again in a short period of time. In a large facility, how can managers optimize their waste collection to save on working hours and improve workflow?

1. Consider Centralized Drop Points for Waste

Ideally, these drop points should be as close to the places where waste is generated as possible, reducing unnecessary movement. Centralized drop points for waste keep your team working on revenue-generating tasks in their areas of responsibility instead of running to a dock door or another floor to dispose of trash. Centralized drop points also create orderly workspaces. When workers get into a task that they feel they cannot stop without losing track of what they are doing, they may let trash pile up. If the drop location is nearby, they can drop the waste and get right back to work.

2. Use Powered Machines to Move Waste

After you’ve centrally located your trash collection points, you will need a quick and straightforward way to get the waste containers from their collection points to the compactor with minimal interruption to your operation. With a powered tow cart, golf cart, or forklift, you minimize the risk of injury and speed up the process of removing the waste. If you opt for a towing configuration versus a forklift, you have the added benefit of making the containers trainable and getting them all to the compactor in one trip. We can help you understand which configuration will work best for your facility.

3. Rent a compactor with fullness notifications or scheduled pickups based on your waste history

A lot of working hours are wasted on calling the waste hauler, determining if the compactor is full or not, or managing hauler access to your facility. A fullness management package has an 80% full light that measures pressure against the compactor ram face and approximates the load in the compactor. At 80% it is time to call your hauler for a pick up in the next day or so. No wondering if your compactor is full or not. You can also automate the process by simple scheduling pickup. If you know your compactor is almost full every Friday, then that’s when you should schedule a pickup.

Compactor Rentals of America’s sales team has thousands of hours reviewing commercial and industrial facilities just like yours and can offer unique and valuable insight into how to optimize your waste stream. We take the time to review your operation from start to finish so we can understand where your points of pain are and how we can help.

If you have any questions about how you might go about optimizing your facility, please Contact us today!