Nearly every week, it seems at least one prominent company is announcing a new landfill waste reduction strategy. But finding out whether those initiatives are paying off can be a challenge.
UL Environment hopes to provide some clarity in this emerging area by pioneering a series of new environmental claim validation services for businesses.
The business unit of Underwriters Laboratories, famous for its product-safety certification, is now validating the variety of methods that companies use to minimize the amount of waste sent to landfills — everything from energy creation through waste incineration to recycling and composting.
The UL Environment validation is offered at three levels:
- Companies that achieve a landfill diversion rate of 100 percent qualify for its Zero Waste to Landfill validation.
- Companies that achieve a diversion rate of 98 percent or greater qualify for the Virtually Zero Waste to Landfill validation.
- Those companies that achieve a diversion rate of 80 percent or greater qualify for a Landfill Waste Diversion validation.
From DuPont to Walmart, major corporations are beginning to roll out new policies that address landfill waste reduction. As new initiatives continue to be developed by companies large and small, there is a growing need for third-party validation of landfill waste diversion claims, said Angela Griffiths, director of operations for UL Environment.
“We found that when it comes to standards in zero waste, there’s not a lot of consistency across the board,” she said. “There are no federal standards, for example.”
While there are a scattering of private consulting firms offering certification for landfill waste diversion, UL is one of the first major organizations stepping into the certification realm.
Source: GreenBiz.com
By Jennifer Inez Ward