Those wise words, “when you put a value on garbage it gets cleaned up” came from Ed Viesturs, one of the world’s premier high-altitude mountaineers, one of a small number who have summited all eight-thousander peaks in the world, often without any additional oxygen. You see, most climbers need extra oxygen that comes in aluminum tanks. And they use all sorts of disposable equipment and supplies to make it to the summit. Since 1953 when Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers known to have reached the summit of Mount Everest, the mountain has turned into a dump – literally collecting an estimated 50-120 tons of litter along with an estimated 120 dead bodies.
Recently, the Chinese government has put a bounty on that litter, offering the equivalent of $1.40 for every kilogram hauled out by expedition members, porters and guides. It isn’t a lot of money considering you have to risk your life to get it. But it’s enough to motivate people to do the right thing. In fact, a team of veteran sherpas has announced plans to clear 8,800 pounds of garbage from the lower part of the mountain and another 2,200 pounds from near the 29,035-foot summit this year.
When you put a value on garbage, it gets cleaned up. This is true for your company just like it is for Everest. Companies spend an estimated $22 billion each year to landfill waste from their operations. And based on estimates from Waste Management, those same materials could be worth from $20-40 billion. If companies could see where the value was, they would very eagerly clean up their waste and turn it into a resource.
Last week, at the Sustainable Brands conference where I heard Ed Viesturs speak, RecycleMatch launched our new enterprise software as a service solution to help companies get to zero waste and maximize the value of their materials. Why software? Because if companies can’t see the waste, and can’t see the value of the materials they won’t clean it up. Software is the tool we use to give companies that visibility to their own waste streams and the potential for value that is hidden in their dumpsters.
At ReycleMatch, we’ve seen first-hand that when companies have more visibility to the waste they actually generate, and better information about how much those resources are actually worth that they can move mountains of trash into mountains of cash. (Okay, that’s cliché, but I guess I have mountains on my mind).