The Seattle Tacoma International Airport has been recognized by the State of Washington Recycling Association as the Recycler of the Year in their business category. Through innovative planning, “Sea-Tac” launched a number of strategic maneuvers to increase their recycling rate from twenty four percent to a little over thirty percent in 2012 alone. These changes involved providing unwanted food to a regional food bank and working closely with construction and maintenance staff to reduce the overall volume of hazardous and toxic waste used and generated by their offices.
The environmental milestones reached by the airport last year include:
- donating almost four hundred meals meals worth of food to a local food bank
- Recycling over seventeen hundred tons of waste materials
- Recycling close to one thousand tons of cardboard, paper, and aluminum
- Recycling fifty four tons of spent cooking oil
- Diverting over twenty five thousand pounds of food and organic waste from landfills
The savings experienced by the airport came to over three hundred thousand dollars and this included saving of two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars in disposal fees. The airport earned over thirty two thousand dollars in recycling rebates. This decreased the amount of waste the airport needed to landfill by over five percent in one year.
WasteCare Wants You to Remember: When your business makes a commitment to recycling and waste reduction, you can get more than just cost savings – if you do a good job, you may even receive positive publicity and thanks from your local community. That kind of news is worth its weight in gold! (or in this case, the weight of the trash you divert!)