It all started about two years ago when our Chairman/Founder challenged us to creatively reduce our consumption while at the same time recycling everything we possibly could. Soon thereafter, he hired a guy who started that all too familiar corporate ripple effect of water cooler whispering. No one seemed to know who he worked for or his title, and yet many of us found him at odd hours digging through our trash and even photographing our waste. His name was Ron. Ron’s personality made him a perfect fit for the position, he had a passion for recycling and finding use in trash and his enthusiasm was hard not to catch. He was also perfectly willing to self implicate to prove his point which went a long way as we grumbled our way through mandatory recycling lessons and then left flabbergasted at our own trashy mess.
Shortly after Ron’s arrival he instigated and then orchestrated mandatory recycling training, where some of us witnessed the horror of our personal trash can full of recyclables (that weren’t being recycled) flashed on a massive screen for all the company to see. We were given elementary lessons in the proper use of the traditional red, white and blue recycling stations, and then sent on our way with a goal in mind–within one year, we shall produce NO WASTE. It took awhile, some more grumbling and about three iterations of recycling lessons, and finally last August…we were there: Zero Waste.
Now mind you, I am a Midwestern bred transplant, and this business of recycling was at this time still fairly new to me; in fact in the town where I went to college, they burned and still burn everything. Then they mix it with coal and fuel the town–at that time, you actually had to pay a substantial amount more to your local trash service to recycle. It encourages the type of behavior you’d expect–everyone sends everything to be burned. But here, no waste? It seemed a ridiculous notion, but selfishly I began to imagine immediately the public relations opportunities that this might bring, and figured it might actually teach me a few things to boot. I was sold. We started weighing our accomplishments as the piles of trash filled a warehouse space we rented, and soon as the monthly report showed up on my desk, I’d always gasp in amazement at one thing or another: 1,500 pounds of glass in one month? 2,596 pounds of circuit boards in a month? You can’t help but immediately think outside of your own little sphere and imagine the possibilities of such a thing being implemented in a widespread way.
It actually took Ryzex less than a year. And to hear our Founder talk about it now, hitting the 85% mark was easy; the challenge came in the small stuff–figuring out how to recycle cigarette butts (stop smoking), ensuring that the stream of recyclers we sourced was actually doing what they said they’d do and so on down the chain, and then once we achieved it, maintaining it. Before we got from here to there, we began offering electronic waste recycling to some of our customers and their trash started showing up at our door.
Oh, and did I mention that our Founder also mandated that we make a profit doing it? This seemed to me to be the most ridiculous notion of all but once you understand his logic, it makes perfect sense. Ryzex is small as far as companies go, only 350 people worldwide. We like to do the right thing so that we can sleep at night, but not every company has this luxury–a entrepreneurial Founder willing to throw money and resources to boot, well, that makes us even more unique.
A publicly held corporation has a responsibility to its shareholders to make money. Show how you can make money recycling everything and people might listen. Otherwise, you have a nice initiative that we’re undertaking at our nice company in our nice town. To make a big difference, you have to show people how to make a profit. Just as I, a couple years prior, did not have the foresight to purchase at an additional cost recycling services, a major corporation employing tens of thousands of people producing millions of tons of waste would likely not either.
As I write this, we are working on a year of being zero waste. This year alone we’ve kept nearly 180,000 pounds of waste from our landfills. We plan to replicate this at all our other locations. And we also offer our customers electronic waste recycling services. Internally, I am one among many Ryzex employees who have taken our habits to our homes.
Imagine if every company in America was mandated to recycle 85% of their waste what the monthly report numbers could look like.
