Social Trash Collection
DC entrepreneur Walker Lunn launched the city's first food composting business, EnviRelation, a few years ago. Now he’s onto trash. Grid Waste is an online procurement platform that lets commercial businesses hire a trash hauling company as a group. Walker says it lowers the cost, since the trash haulers have to bid for their business. It also reduces the amount of trash trucks on the road since just one of them can pick up trash in one area rather than having several trucks picking up trash on a single block. Walker says there are 2,500 to 3,000 US trash companies and 280 million tons of waste per year, not including recycling.
The platform, which is being offered in at least 30 states, is also providing data on when and how much trash is being picked up, info that’s of particular interest to building owners interested in sustainability. Walker says trash hauling companies like seeing how their competitors are bidding, a process that’s traditionally been secretive. This is likely the most technology the waste industry has seen in a long time, says Walker. (When the Nats lose, we get mad and throw our remote control in the garbage. So, he may be wrong.)
