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P.O. Box 17177 Chapel Hill, NC 27516 -7177 (919) 968 -2885 FAX (919) 932 -2900 www.co.orange.nc.us /recyclins "0; Orange County Solid Waste Management Orange County Landfill (919) 932 -2989 Memorandum To: Solid Waste Advisory Group From: Orange County Solid Waste Staff Subject: Results of 2016 -17 Waste Composition Study Date: December 4, 2017 Attachments: Five Orange Community Recycling (919) 968 -2788 A $ This memo summarizes work over the past year on internal government recycling and waste reduction program investigation, education and improvements within the four local governments within Orange County. Background Every few years the County conducts waste composition audits of the major County and Town buildings to measure progress in recycling by analyzing how much recycling remains in the trash. Throughout fiscal year 2016 -2017, Solid Waste staff, primarily intern Alex Gottschalk, conducted a series of these waste composition studies or audits of trash from major government buildings in the County (Attachment 1) and all three Towns (Attachments 2 - 4), the first since 2008. For County buildings the amount of recyclables found in the trash by weight dropped from 28% in 2008 to 18 %, a decline of 33% which represents significant progress. Similar comparative data was not available for the various Towns. Following the audits, Solid Waste staff conducted a series of follow up face -to -face surveys (Attachment 5, survey blank form) and building walk - throughs with County Department heads, and Town of Chapel Hill Department heads to clarify their the role of recycling and waste reduction activities in their respective Departments and point towards future improvements. Only the County report contains analysis of the survey results and delves more deeply into detailed findings as a result. Similar surveys and walk- throughs are pending with the Towns of Carrboro and Hillsborough. This memo summarizes the results and process of those audits and describes the process County staff used for identifying possible improvements to current recycling and waste reduction activities throughout local government. Auditing Process The four attached memos detail the results for each of the individual governments. Below is a summary of the attached information. Because the previous waste audits were conducted in 2008 enough time had gone by to assess progress by government employees and staff. Unannounced, Solid Waste staff sequestered a load of trash from each major building in each government throughout late 2016 and early 2017. Where multiple Departments occupied a single building, every effort was made to separate trash by Department. Loads were then sorted and paper, cans and bottles, electronics, hazardous waste (like batteries) and reusable items (like mugs or clothing) were weighed separately. Those buildings with low occupancy or small in size were not included. Waste from public parks was not included either. The table below summarizes the percentages by weight of recyclable materials found in the trash, totaled for each government's buildings. Each of the attachments contains the audit details for the individual government and provides an overall summary with building -by- building findings. This weight - of- recyclables-in- the -trash metric is a surrogate for the success of the internal recycling efforts by the various governments. While it was just a single day's trash from each major building, the collective metric represents a reasonable estimate of ongoing performance.