A waste audit is not a haggle over the gate fee. It is an examination of what you are producing, how it is segregated, how often it is collected and what each of those decisions costs — which is where nearly all of the saving usually turns out to be.
A waste cost-saving audit examines what a site actually produces, how it is segregated, how often it is collected and what happens to it afterwards, and then prices the alternatives. The gate fee is part of it, but in most reviews the gate fee is not where the money is. The money is in classification, segregation, container sizing and collection frequency — decisions made once, often years ago, and never revisited.
What gets examined
- Twelve months of invoices and transfer notes. Not the contract rate, the actual charges: rebates, standing charges, container hire, contamination penalties, weighbridge tickets against invoiced tonnages.
- What is in each container. A skip that is half air is being paid for by the lift; a skip with one contaminating item in it may be being charged at a hazardous rate for its whole weight.
- Classification. Whether each stream is coded correctly, and whether anything is being sent as hazardous that could be segregated so that most of it is not.
- Collection frequency against fill level. Scheduled collections of part-full containers are one of the most common and most easily corrected costs on any site.
- Where the waste goes. The destination determines the price. A stream going to disposal that could go to recovery is usually paying landfill tax it does not need to.
Why the market matters as much as the site
Waste pricing is regional and it moves. Gate fees at permitted facilities vary with haulage distance, with what a site is currently short of, and with the value of any recovered material. A price that was competitive when the contract was signed can be well off the market three years later without anyone doing anything wrong. Testing a stream against several licensed outlets is the only way to know where it currently sits.
What a good report gives you
A useful audit ends with a stream-by-stream statement of what you produce, the code it should carry, the disposal or recovery route it should take, what that route costs and what you are paying now — with the difference set out per stream rather than as a single headline figure. It should also be honest about the streams where there is nothing to save, because a report that finds a saving everywhere is not a report, it is a sales document.
Some recommendations cost nothing but a conversation with a supervisor. Others need a container change, a new segregation point or a change of contractor. Both should be priced, and both should say how long they take to pay for themselves.