Waste Management Plan Development

waste management plan

A plan is the written record of the goals you wish to achieve and how you want to go about it. Whenever there is a lot of waste involved in any project it is prudent to document the next move and how all of it is going to be processed. The whole waste management is generally the responsibility of the contractor and specific activities are handled according to the plan developed by them regarding salvaging, recycling or reuse.

Things to cover in the plan

When you sit down to put everything on the paper there are a lot of things that come to mind. Here is a simple guide to categorize things in a proper manner.

  • The waste management plan should have responsibilities clearly marked
  • The goals should be articulated and objectives mentioned
  • An estimate of the amount of waste and the different types of waste materials to be disposed
  • Targets to reduce the volume of the waste being sent to landfill
  • Description of each method being used to recycle the waste
  • Identification of segregation locations and destinations along with the transportation to be used
  • Tracking the progress of the whole endeavour
  • Any special measures to be used in order to handle the waste material
  • A way to encourage everyone on-site to participate
  • Sequencing the whole exercise
  • Review of the entire project and target dates

How to go about executing the waste management plan

The first thing that you do after making the plan is to get the right tools like skip bins to handle all the waste stuff. Next, the people who have been assigned the responsibilities should go through the plan and understand every aspect of it so that things can be completed on the target dates assigned.

The people on site should be divided into small teams and each should work on a batch of waste material in parallel. This helps in saving a lot of time. One thing that we need to keep in mind that the goal should be to generate as little waste as possible.

Segregation is key to achieve the best results from the plan which you have devised. The more you are able to segregate waste the better your final result will be. Remember to handle the waste material in a proper manner and not to ignore health warnings just to speed things up. Once segregation is achieved you can send off the waste as per the plan to various sites for recycling/dumping as the case may be.

You will need to keep a record of all the waste that was produced and all the waste that was processed as part of your plan. The related costs and savings should also be kept for the record. Proper communication to all personnel on-site is imperative so that there is no issue while handling materials and segregation. Any relevant documentation should be attached with the communication so that everyone knows what they are expected to do and what are the specific methods and techniques they need to know before, during and after the tasks assigned to them.