A zero waste business policy is now easier to implement than you think

The notion of a circular economy – where almost everything is reused and little is discarded – once seemed like little more than a futurist’s pipe dream. But with everything from a plane made of trash to a zero waste office park, businesses small and large are increasingly turning the fantasy into reality.

The idea of a circular economy has been around since the late 1970s, but for a long time it simply wasn’t possible: the technology hadn’t caught up with the vision, and most companies were reluctant to get onboard. But all of that is starting to change, beginning with the language. Experts and innovators increasingly speak of a “regenerative” economy, one in which, from beginning to end, the parts of a product can be reused over and over again. It’s also about coming up with new ways of conceiving what a business, a building or a product can be.

For many companies, the process begins with committing to zero waste, which usually involves increasing recycling efforts and eliminating trash sent to landfills. But truly embracing this circularity, in which the idea of regeneration and reuse extends to all areas of the business, is still more the exception than the rule, according to Jay Coalson, executive director of the Zero Waste Alliance, a nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon, that works with companies to help achieve zero waste.

“The concept is getting more common, but honestly, most companies are still thinking of this in terms of increasing their recycling rates versus truly trying to eliminate waste,” Coalson said.

Follow Your Heart, the company behind vegetarian and vegan products like Vegenaise, an egg-free mayonnaise, has taken a holistic approach in its efforts to become zero waste by 2016. Its Chatsworth, California, manufacturing facility, known as “Earth Island”, includes skylights, recycled carpeting, tankless hot water heaters, energy efficient lighting systems and environmentally friendly refrigeration. The building and operations run primarily on solar power – the facility currently has just over 1,000 solar panels on its roof, which produce 200 kilowatts of green power, supplying over 70% of the company’s power needs.

The company is looking beyond just manufacturing, and trying to apply a circular strategy to its entire business model. This extends even to areas normally reserved for human resources: providing five free electric car charging stations at the company’s parking lot, for example. The company also recently changed the plastic caps on its glass-jarred food products, replacing the waxed cardboard liner in the caps with thin rubber, reducing the amount of material used and making the caps fully recyclable.

Follow Your Heart began its evolution by categorizing different types of waste and then gathering data on how much they generated in each category. Some of these categories included food waste, waste from packaging of individual ingredients and finished goods and detritus from the day-to-day administrative tasks in the office

Within each of these broad categories, the company identified types of material that entered the waste stream – such as grease, glass, cardboard and different types of plastic – and looked at ways to divert them from going to landfill either by reducing the amount they used, recycling or donation. Last year, Follow Your Heart was able to cut its waste sent to landfill by 50% by implementing stricter recycling protocols throughout its facility.

The biggest challenge for Follow Your Heart, however, has been changing the way employees view waste in general, said Sheena DeBellis, director of quality and sustainability at Follow Your Heart.

“We’ve worked to change the perception that when you throw something ‘away’ it simply goes away,” she said. “Though we may not see it, that plastic straw you throw away won’t decompose for another 700 years.”

The company has worked on educating employees about the social and environmental consequences of waste and other alternatives to the convenient, disposable item. One ideal of the circular economy is the creation of a business that works within its surroundings so that nothing goes to waste, creating an ecosystem in which everything is dependent on everything else.

Beyond Laundry is one company trying to achieve this ideal. Founder Susan Carpenter Sims bills it as a community laundry center that uses a “synergy” of solar power, water- and energy-efficient machines, rainwater harvesting and greywater recycling.

“Our goal is to not only reduce negative environmental impacts, but create regenerative ones,” she said.

Sims is working with green construction experts at the University of New Mexico, Taos, to design something called the “rainwash system”, which will harvest nearly 30,000 gallons of rainwater a year from the roof to be used in the washers. The water used to run the machines will also be purified and recycled, or it will be used to irrigate a greenhouse, a community food garden and an orchard, all located on the laundromat’s grounds, turning the entire enterprise into a community center.

“As soon as I started thinking about the business model, greywater recycling was just a no-brainer,” said Sims. “If you’re generating that much greywater, it just seemed obvious that you should do something regenerative with it.”

The first laundry center is set to open in Taos, New Mexico, where Sims currently lives, within the next two years. The facility is designed to be a 2,400sq ft-building made of steel, which doesn’t require much energy to produce, is recyclable, and low-cost. It will house 22 efficient washers and 24 dryers, powered mostly by solar. She hopes to franchise across the country, as well as put 10% of Beyond Laundry’s profits toward building similar laundry centers in developing countries.

The biggest challenge has been figuring out ways to make the center as integrative as possible, including how to use the heat from the dryers to heat the water, or looking at whether it’s possible to use the energy generated by the water rushing out of the machines.

Sims says her premise for the enterprise was that it should be a self-sustaining close system. “Value for people and planet is created synergistically and exponentially when people are able to work, play and hang out in a beautiful greenhouse and garden that are nurtured by the water they just used to wash their clothes” Sims said.

Despite its lofty ambitions, Beyond Laundry may still succumb to the hard realities that face any new business. But it demonstrates how circular economy thinking can, with a bit of creativity, be applied to just about any kind of company.