Reducing Waste in a Department Store

In this post, I am sharing the notes for the final presentation about the department store waste reduction and recycling project created by Erin Kruizenga. The slides for the presentation are in the attachment below.

For my project I am working with the agency “Waste Less Wisconsin”. Waste Less Wisconsin lets their student participants create their own project or new idea to help Wisconsin “waste less”. For my project I decided to start a new reuse and recycle project at the retail store I work for. (My store wished to go unnamed for the sake of my presentation).

My store had a recycling plan on paper (only because in was a company mandate) but they were only doing the bare minimum. I started my project by doing a little leg work. I decided to focus my attention on my department. Since I would have the most control over my department and it is the highest trafficked area, it would serve as a good “sample population” for the basis of my research.

I started by gathering basic statistics.
• How many boxes of bags were used during an average week in my department.
• Approximately what percentage of trash being collected was actually recyclable materials.
• The number of recycling tubs in the store. (plastic, paper, mix)
• How much paper was being used for signing
• How much of the signing paper was un-needed (written wrong or a duplicate)

These basic stats would allow me to have something tangible to measure against once I began implementing changes, meaning I would be able to see if what I was doing was making a difference, be it positive or not.

• Plastic Bags: I kept track of how many bags were used by asking each desk to reserve their empty boxes (the bags come in cardboard boxes) once they ran out of bags. At the end of every shift I would go around and tally up the empty boxes (marking the ones I counted as to not count them twice), then take them to the dock where they were compressed and recycled.

• Trash: Each desk (in my department) has 2 or 3 trash bins, all the same size [side note: NONE of them had a recycling bin!]. This job was the one I was looking forward to the least…To measure the amount of recyclables taking up space in the trash, I did a simple volume displacement test. Towards the end of the afternoon (when the trash is usually picked up for the second time) I pulled out the two full trash bins from under my desk. Since these trash bins are not a public place of disposal, merely used for behind the desk materials, I felt safe enough to ‘dive in’. Donning elbow length dishwashing gloves I began sorting through the trash bins. I put all the recyclables I pulled from the trash into a separate recycling bin and the actual trash into a separate empty trash bin a barrowed from the department next to me. When I was finished sorting, I had a FULL recycling bin (mostly full of plastic bags) and only a half full trash bin! I found this to be very significant since I started with TWO full trash bins.

• Number of recycling tubs: This was an easy one. I walked around the store and counted the number of bins that were in the store, simple.

• Signing paper: We do all of our signing by hand the old fashion way by changing out the old paper signs for new paper signs. The paper we use for signing is 10pt thickness, meaning a stack of 100sheets should be an inch high. (100 card of 10pt thickness would stack 1 inch high (100 x .010 = 1) The store changes signs anywhere from 2 to 4+ times a week. During the week I was gathering my stats we signed 3 times. I did all the signing for my department personally so I was able to measure the stack I stared with and the stack I ended with. I was shocked at how many duplicate and unnecessary signs we had! Over 300sheets (3inches) for my department alone! I know for a fact this is one the low side, there have been times where my stack of left over signs was high than 4inches! And that is only after ONE night of signing.

One thing I didn’t take into my initial statistics is the amount of old signs (i.e. the ones I am replacing with the new signs). 98% of these signs were just being tossed out in the trash! I ended up finding a way to reuse these signs and then recycling them, but more on that later.

My response after watching the Battle of the Bag film for the first time…
I knew that plastic bags (especially non biodegradable ones) were “bad for the environment”, but I didn’t really understand how incredibly harmful they really are. My limited (and now feeling very ignorant) knowledge of the aftermath of the plastic bag was that they took up all the room in our landfills and didn’t break down very easily or at all there for harming our environment. I didn’t really see the complete range of harm they present. Plastic bags are clogging up drains in India that worsened a major flood where lives were lost, chocking and slowly killing animals, not to mention that the bag its self is created from oil is a major harm as we are unnecessarily depleting the Earth’s natural resources and participating in the evil practice that is ‘Big Oil’. The harm of using cheap plastic bags directly affects every person on this planet. I also had no idea that the plastic bags problem is so severe that using one is banned in certain areas. That is its self says something, because do you know how hard it is to ban an everyday item? I do, it is nearly impossible.

So I know my problems, but what can I do to fix them?

• Reusable bag incentive: I believe offering customers a monetary incentive (for example 10% off entire purchase) for using a reusable bag instead of a plastic bag would greatly decrease the number of bags being given out. Obviously I do not have anywhere near the authority to make such a think come about. So I started a petition of customers and employees who would like my store to implement a reusable bag incentive. Once I have acquired a significant amount of signatures I will present them (along with a report from an independent eco-friendly agency) to our corporate office.

• More recycling bins: Having recycling bins at each desk would help to ensure that the majority of recyclables are in fact being recycled, rather than ending up in the trash.

• Editing signs before they print: By go over the signs on the computer system before they print, I was able to catch the duplicated and errors. This way the unnecessary signs were never printed and the paper never wasted.

• Reusing old signs: Instead of recycling the old signs right away, I am reusing them by printing my NEW signs on the back of the old ones. (using both sides of the paper). This should really cut down on the amount of paper being put into circulation.

After almost a month of my changes being in place…

• Plastic Bags: This number hasn’t changed all that much since plastic bags are our only option. But have met with everyone in my department and told them the harmful effects that plastic bags have on our environment and that we should do what we can to help. We’ve become a lot more conservative about the number of bags with give out (i.e. instead of nicely packing a purchase in 2 bags, we stuff them into one bag).

• Trash: The recycling bins have helped cut down the trashed recyclables percentage significantly. When I did my displacement test again there were still a few recyclables in the trash (old habits) but the amount of recyclables have gone down by over half!

• Recycling bins: There is now a mixed bin at each desk in my department. Success!

• Signing paper: The amount of signing paper has gone down tremendously. Even though there are still some unnecessary signs, the majority of the unnecessary signs are being printed on the back sides of the old signs, so it’s a pretty big accomplishment.

When I first began this project, I did not really think that our stores practices had ‘global’ effects. What really altered my perspective was the ‘battle of the bag’ segment. The video we watched completely changed my focus and perspective. At first I didn’t factor in the plastic bag into my project. I knew that it was obviously a better option to use a reusable one, but I had no idea that by accepting and improperly discarding a plastic bag I was adding to the ridiculous amount of harm caused by them. I now find it hard to just hand out plastic bags to a customer without picturing the segment of the video where the turtle had choked to death on plastic bags. I mean these are animals that naturally live to be over a hundred, and one plastic bag put a stop to that. Quite alarming.
If I were to do this project all over again I would have been calling and writing corporate from the beginning and just skipped the middle man I have been trying to negotiate with. I also would have started my petition earlier as to have enough signatures to send in to corporate before the semesters end so I could get some feedback from them.