Every facility should plan to conduct a commercial waste audit at least once a year. This guide will walk you through the essential steps of planning a waste audit, and explain what a waste audit entails, what you should expect, and what is needed to get actionable data.
Benefits of a Waste Audit for Strategic Waste Management
A well-executed waste audit provides many benefits. It supplies the granular data needed to make informed operational, billing, and sustainability decisions. It verifies information from haulers, identifies inefficiencies, and reveals opportunities to reduce waste and costs. Accurate waste data plays a critical role in sustainability reporting and LEED certification, as well as in benchmarking your facility’s year-over-year waste reduction performance. It can also affect yearly waste hauler contract renegotiations.
Without verified data, waste costs and performance metrics are largely based on estimates, which can lead to unnecessary fees and missed opportunities. A waste audit gives you the hard data you need to manage waste strategically and sustainably. By understanding exactly what is in your waste stream, you can make smarter purchasing decisions, engage tenants more effectively, and track progress toward your zero waste or ESG goals.
Here’s everything you need to know about planning, scheduling, and conducting a waste audit for your company.
When to Schedule a Commercial Waste Audit
Timing is key to ensuring your audit reflects typical building operations for your organization.
Avoid planning an audit if there are any major events happening, such as construction or when occupancy is changing. Large tenant moves, seasonal events, or periods of low or fluctuating occupancy can skew the data, leading to results that are not reflective of normal operations.
A waste audit is supposed to reflect what happens on a normal day. Your audit should capture a representative snapshot of daily waste generation, so choose a time when building operations are normal. For example, if your building operates at full occupancy during spring and fall, those months are ideal.
Communicate and Engage Stakeholders
A successful waste audit depends on clear communication with all stakeholders, including building management, janitorial staff, tenants, and haulers. Keep all stakeholders informed to ensure the waste stream audit runs smoothly.
Before the audit begins, set aside time to hold a pre-audit meeting to discuss the waste audit process and goals, and address any logistical challenges. This is also a great opportunity to reinforce the purpose of the waste audit as a step toward improving efficiency and sustainability for all.
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Inform tenants: Let them know when the audit will take place and what it entails. Transparency encourages cooperation and prevents confusion.
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Coordinate with janitorial teams: They play a vital role in collecting and sorting materials accurately.
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Work with your hauler: Notify your waste service provider so they can accommodate the audit schedule and provide relevant documentation, such as load weights or hauling invoices.
Good communication ensures that everyone involved understands their role, helping the waste audit process run smoothly and efficiently.
Types of Waste Audits: Define Your Scope and Goals
Not every waste audit looks the same. The scope depends on your facility’s size, goals, and data needs.
Waste audits can be as broad or as targeted as necessary to accomplish whatever goals your organization has in mind.
A broad audit might include all waste streams — from trash and recycling to organics and specialty waste — to create a comprehensive baseline. A targeted audit, on the other hand, might focus on a specific issue, such as contamination in the recycling stream or food waste generation.
Defining clear goals at the outset helps determine the level of detail needed, the duration of the waste investigation, and whether you’ll need professional support.
Waste audit types and goals can include:
- Waste audits for billing verification – Ensuring hauler invoices accurately reflect the volume and type of waste collected.
- Waste audits for tenant allocation – Tracking tenant waste streams to verify tenant billing or compliance.
- Zero waste audits – Supporting zero waste goals, TRUE Zero Waste or LEED certification efforts.
- Food waste audits – Used to make decisions about the feasibility or efficiency of organic waste programs, or to determine the amount of food waste generated that can be donated.
- Waste audits for diversion tracking – Measuring the percentage of materials being recycled or otherwise diverted from the landfill.
- Waste audits for compliance and reporting – Supporting sustainability goals, local waste laws, and other reporting needs.
- Waste audits for cost reduction – Identifying inefficiencies, opportunities for right-sizing equipment and service to reduce hauling costs and optimize collection schedules.
- Waste audits for program improvement – Evaluating the effectiveness of your waste management strategy, including contamination levels, diversion rates, and more.
Assembling the Waste Audit Right Team
A waste audit can be conducted internally or through an external consultant. If your facility has an experienced sustainability or operations team familiar with waste data collection, you may be able to perform the audit in-house.
Professional waste audit services should be secured if your facility does not have the experience to ensure accurate waste data collection and waste stream analysis. Professional waste auditors can provide more reliable data, especially when it comes to waste stream classifications, sorting, and data analysis.
A qualified waste audit team brings:
- A comprehensive waste audit process with industry-standard protocols.
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Trained personnel equipped with safety gear and standardized methods for handling waste.
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Expertise in categorizing materials and identifying contamination.
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Tools for weighing, recording, and analyzing waste by material type.
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Insights into industry benchmarks and cost-saving opportunities.
- Knowledge of historical commercial waste data for better analysis.
How to Conduct a Waste Audit Step by Step
A typical waste audit involves several key steps. Here is what to expect from the process.
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Planning and setup: Identify collection points, gather necessary equipment (scales, bins, PPE), and set up sorting areas.
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Collection period: Collect waste from designated areas over one or more days.
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Sorting and weighing: Materials are separated into categories such as organics, paper, cardboard, plastics, metals, glass, e-waste, and trash.
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Recording data: Weights are recorded for each category, often by location or tenant.
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Data analysis: Results are analyzed to determine the waste composition and diversion rate, identify contamination, and highlight improvement opportunities.
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Reporting and recommendations: Findings are compiled into a report with visuals, charts, and actionable recommendations tailored to your facility.
Turn Waste Audits into Action to Drive Change
The real value of a waste audit lies in what happens after the data is collected. Use your waste audit results to build a sustainable waste management strategy to help you:
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Identify inefficiencies and adjust waste collection schedules or bin size and placement.
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Improve recycling education with updated signage or tenant outreach and training.
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Launch new diversion programs for organics, e-waste, or any material that you find in abundance in your waste streams.
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Negotiate better contracts with waste haulers based on verified data.
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Set performance goals and track progress over time.
For multi-tenant properties, share the results with occupants to encourage participation and accountability. Data transparency can motivate behavior change and align everyone toward common sustainability goals.
See how we turned hard data from one real waste audit into actionable insights to drive change.
Work With a Waste Audit Leader
Whether performed internally or with the help of experts like Great Forest, a commercial waste audit provides the clarity and confidence needed to make smarter, data-driven decisions about your waste and your bottom line. Waste audits are an essential waste management tool for every building and business.
Why work with Great Forest?
- As sustainable waste management pioneers, Great Forest established the comprehensive waste audit process that has become the industry standard.
- Our team performs 100+ waste audits and infrastructure assessments each year.
- We conducted the largest commercial waste characterization study in the world with data from 100+ waste audits worldwide, analyzing 170,000 lbs of waste.
- Our data informs the EPA’s volume to waste conversion conversion.
Great Forest performs waste audits for the U.S. Green Building Council (the organization responsible for the LEED green building program) and hundreds of corporate offices and buildings each year. We have conducted waste audits for schools, universities, VA hospitals, factories, retails stores and restaurant chains, and even NYC’s Penn Station.
Nationally, we’ve conducted waste audits in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Washington D.C., Illinois, Florida, Virginia, California, and more. Globally, we have conducted waste audits in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Germany and more.
Ready to see what’s really in your waste stream?
Contact Great Forest today to plan your waste audit and start turning data into action.
Learn More
Waste Audit Benefits and Facts: What Every Business Needs To Know