Wastequip issues first sustainability report

Wastequip, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based manufacturer of waste handling equipment, has released its first-ever sustainability report, detailing the company’s commitment to sustainability and benchmarks for the future.

“Most people interact with waste containers daily. As a manufacturer serving the waste industry, Wastequip has an incredible opportunity to integrate people and planet into our industry, while running a successful business,” says report author Kristin Kinder, vice president of research and waste stream sustainability for Wastequip. “Since we started our corporate responsibility program, CORE, in 2020, we have focused on doing the work before talking about it. This report shares the depth and breadth of where that hard work has taken us and the future that foundation enables us to build.”

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The 2022 report details the company’s sustainability journey and achievements in the people, planet and profit pillars that comprise its CORE program, setting the stage for Wastequip’s future priorities.

Wastequip is focused on producing products with less material—primarily through Project25 from Wastequip’s cart brand, Toter. The initiative aims to reduce virgin resin use by 25 percent in its cart manufacturing while maintaining durability. In 2022, Toter launched its cart buy-back program, released what it says is the industry’s first 100-percent recycled cart body and reduced virgin resin per cart by 12.9 percent.

A life cycle assessment (LCA) of its Toter containers indicated 62 percent of the 2019 container’s carbon footprint comes from virgin resin. The company has since worked to incorporate post-consumer resin and other recycled materials for its most popular colored containers.

“Of course, maintaining Toter’s legendary toughness and durability, while reducing the virgin resin in our carts, was the only option,” Kinder said when Project25 was announced in 2021. “As Toter’s LCA confirmed, extending a cart’s lifespan is one of the most critical components to decreasing a cart’s carbon footprint.”

To bring more postconsumer recycled content back into the company’s manufacturing and to chip away at the 30 percent of municipalities and haulers that Wastequip says it surveyed who say that they landfill carts at the end-of-life, the launched our cart buy-back program in 2022. The company collects and recycles its used carts, providing a credit to the customer, the report says.

Making Wastequip the best company its team members have worked for is another critical component of the company’s sustainability goals. The company has achieved and will continue to maintain gender pay equity. The report also outlines its commitment to diverse supplier partnerships, giving back to the communities Wastequip operates in, and to training and development programs for its workforce.

In addition to providing equitable pay, the report indicates the company is focused on diversity, safety and training initiatives.

Since launching CORE, the corporate responsibility program has been led by a steering committee with cross-functional representation. Wastequip also has tied at least 10 percent of all executive bonuses to CORE-related objectives.