How WillScot Mobile Mini Tripled Waste Diversion Rates Across 240+ Facilities

Use Case

Developing a data-driven waste management strategy to improve visibility into waste streams, optimize diversion efforts, and implement scalable sustainability practices across a multi-site industrial portfolio.

Challenge

WillScot Mobile Mini, a modular space and storage solution company offering mobile offices, portable storage units, and more, operates over 240 facilities across North America. This breadth of service results in a considerable generation of construction and demolition waste. As a pioneer in the circular economy — with a refurbish, repurpose, and reuse business model — they are committed to pursuing efforts that increase the diversion of waste from the landfill by optimizing waste collection, increasing recycling, and prioritizing upstream reduction.

However, their lack of insight into site-level and company-wide data posed a challenge to their efforts to develop a waste management program.

Gathering that information would only be the first hurdle to overcome. They would also need to establish which actions and processes would bolster the greatest impact, which vendor relationships they would need to revisit or establish, and how to operationalize new best practices with employees across each branch.

To help them measure and manage their efforts, they partnered with Arcadia to conduct waste characterization studies and develop a holistic waste diversion plan for their organization.

Solution

Arcadia began developing a waste diversion program for WillScot Mobile Mini at the beginning of 2023. Waste characterization studies would yield data and insight on the categorical breakdown of what materials were ending up in the trash, and it was critical to select sites that demonstrated a range of operations — ensuring a representative sample of waste generated across all sites by volume and type. A total of nine facilities across six states were selected. Waste samples from each site were collected, sorted, and analyzed into categories — collectively totaling more than 10,000 pounds and including cabling, pallets, wood, plastic, carpet, metal, cardboard, and more.

Recommendations were made according to the waste hierarchy to ensure the best use for materials was selected for diversion or donation, providing site leaders with insights on how to better train staff on handling such materials more responsibly. Focusing upstream on materials management, opportunities were identified to reduce packaging or transition to recyclable options, and to adjust product purchasing for reusable or refillable alternatives to single use. By working with current and new suppliers they explored solutions for take-back programs and bulk purchasing to reduce the environmental impact stemming from transportation and waste.

Arcadia structured its recommendations around the waste hierarchy, ensuring every material was directed to its highest and best use before landfill was ever considered:

• Reduce: Minimize waste at the source by reducing packaging, transitioning to recyclable options, and switching to reusable or refillable alternatives to single-use products
• Reuse: Adjust product purchasing and work with suppliers on bulk buying and take-back programs to keep materials in use longer
• Recycle: Identify and partner with local vendors best equipped to handle recyclable materials like cardboard, metal, plastic, and more
• Recovery: Explore energy recovery options for materials that can't be diverted through other means
• Landfill: Reserve landfill only as a last resort — the least preferred outcome in any waste management decision

Benefits

Through the waste characterizations and waste diversion program rollout across the initial sites, WillScot Mobile Mini was able to implement in-kind donation programs, product purchasing improvements, and more in order to:

• Identify an estimated 12.4 tons of usable items to donate annually
• Partner with new vendors to align with their waste management efforts
• Quantify waste diversion capabilities of the 9 sites from an estimated 15% to 47% — with some sites potentially able to reach 81% diversion
• Reduce costs by more than $200,000 annually at the study sites through optimized hauling and collection

WillScot Mobile Mini plans to expand the implementation of the program across their sites in 2024.