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1 ISBN 0-7729-8593-6 COMMERCIAL WASTE COMPOSITION STUDY VOLUME 11 OF THE ONTARIO WASTE COMPOSITION STUDY Report prepared by : GORE & STORRIE LIMITED Report prepared for: '< '/^ ^ Waste Management Branch ^/^pl'^'^ Ontario Ministry of the Environment ' "^> JULY 1991 o RECrCLABL! Cette publication technique nest disponible qu'en anglais. Copyright: Queen's Printer for Ontario, 199 This publication may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes with appropriate attribution. PIBS 1608 DISCLAIMER This report was prepared for the Ontario Ministry of the Environment as part of a Ministry-funded project. The views and ideas expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Ministry of the Environment, nor does mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation for use. study, m which the crew unloaded the refuse bins by hand to determine the total weight of the waste in the bin. 5. During the course of the study, insights were noted regarding the effectiveness of waste management practices of some firms For example, for automotive repair businesses, it appears that employee's tend to use the general refuse bin for discarding metal waste materials, despite the fact that a scrap metal bin has been made available. Such insights, when communicated to the management of the firm provide an immediate opportunity to help that firm improve the efficiency of their recycling efforts. There is also an indication that differences exist in per employee waste generation rates in small grocery stores and in larger supermarkets. The demonstrated method for estimating the rate of employee waste generation has the potential to be used as a waste management tool by municipalities. The distribution of the daily waste generation rates versus employment data, exhibited in the graphs for each SIC sector, could enable municipal waste management personnel to prioritize their "remedial" waste reduction efforts by planning to visit those companies whose waste generation rates seem out of line with the general waste-to-employee relationship. Recommendations The methods employed in the commercial portion of the Ontario Waste Composition Study have been demonstrated on a selection of commercial businesses in the Regional fvlunicipality of Waterloo. Within the commercial sectors in the Region there is a relatively high awareness of waste diversion options that will reduce waste disposal costs and encourage recycling. Therefore, XV The total annual tonnage received by the two Region of Waterloo landfill sites in 1989 was 439,000 tonnes. Based on the results of the present study, the commercial sector contributed an estimated 76.388 tonnes, or 17.4°o of the total weight. 2. The most commonly encountered waste material in commercial refuse was • corrugated cardboard (OCC) which ranged from a low of 4.0°o to a high of 49.0°o of the weight of refuse generated by the firms which were sampled. The wide range in OCC content may be the result of some firms separating used OCC for recycling, possibly in anticipation of the proposed ban on the landfilling of OCC within the Regional fylunicipality of Waterloo in 1991. Variations observed in the composition of other waste streams may be due to recycling activities, either under the auspices of company-wide programs or by conscientious employees who took materials to recycling locations in the municipality or home to their own Blue Boxes. 3. The statistical reliability of the waste composition data for some of the SIC groups IS questionable because of the small number of waste samples that were sorted. Nevertheless, the data indicate the general proportion of matenais in the waste streams from the 16, two-digit SIC groups that comprise the commercial business community in the Region. Waste from 65 businesses was sorted. 4. The installation of a truck-mounted scale, used to determine the weight of refuse in 2 to 8 cubic yards refuse bins, enabled us to obtain waste quantity data from an additional 80 commercial businesses. For estimating the per employee waste generation rates, this method is more efficient than the labour intensive method, used in the waste composition part of the xiv INFORMATION FOR THE READER The results of the Ontario Waste Composition Study appear in three volumes. Volume contains the results of the residential portion of the Ontario Waste I Composition Study. The emphasis m Volume is on the development and testing I of a method that municipalities can use to estimate per capita generation rates of residential refuse. The field work for Volume took place in East York, Fergus, and I North Bay, Ontario. Volume contains the results of the commercial portion of the Ontario Waste II Composition Study, which are presented herein. Waste generation data for two light industrial businesses are also provided in Volume II. The emphasis m Volume II IS on the development and testing of a method that municipalities can use to estimate per employee waste generation rates and, further, to estimate the quantity of waste generated from all commercial sources. The commercial component of the study took place in the Regional lylunicipality of Waterloo. Volume III is a "user friendly" manual that outlines the procedures for conducting residential and commercial waste composition studies in municipalities of Ontario. (') ABSTRACT Volume II, the Commercial Waste Composition Study, is the second of the three volumes comprising the Ontario Waste Composition Study. The commercial study was conducted in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo between May 15 and August 31, 1990. The study focuses on developing a cost effective method for conducting waste composition assessments, estimating per employee waste generation rates in commercial businesses and estimating the waste generated by the entire commercial sector m a municipality. Statistics Canada, as part of their Standard Industrial Classification (SIC), has disaggregated the universe of economic activity in Canada into 18 divisions. The same classification is used for all of Statistics Canada's economic surveys. The SIC provides the basis for the selection of commercial activities to be studied, and for the extrapolation of sample results into municipal totals. Within this universe of activity, the commercial waste composition study focuses on SIX divisions whose activities take place within the private sector and serve local communities. As these commercial activities are located within the communities they serve, the number and size of these activities can be readily predicted from a knowledge of the size and characteristics of the residential population. Statistics Canada further disaggregates these six divisions of commercial activity into 27, two-digit SIC codes, each representing a familiar group of retail or service activities. In order to get the most information from a limited number of samples, these two-digit groups were further aggregated and disaggregated. The idea here was to aggregate those groups that appeared to have similar waste generation patterns, and to disaggregate those that had varied rates of waste generation. For example, the automotive group was disaggregated to reflect fundamentally different {") kinds of operations in dealerships, garages and gas stations. Among financial services, only banks were sampled. Waste composition inforniation (65 separate collections) and per employee waste rates (212 samples) were obtained for representative commercial businesses. Per employee waste generation rates were estimated from regression analyses or data averaging. Estimated average employee waste generation rates for each disaggregated commercial activity were multiplied by total Regional employment in the activity to obtain estimates of waste generation for the activity. The latter estimates were summed to give a total estimate of waste generated by commercial businesses in the Region. The study did not include schools (see Volume I), hospitals and other health care facilities, government offices or wholesale activities. However, two "light" industries were sampled. (lit)