How Waste Impacts Real Estate's Sustainability Goals

‍Fifth Wall Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/fifthwall/how-tech-startups-can-solve-real-estates-waste-challenge 

Where does your trash end up? For those at home maybe it’s out to the dumpster, recycling bin or even a composting trash can. But it's a bigger, more complicated issue for residential and commercial building owners.

Landfill incentives often outweigh the incentives for recycling. Out of 294 million tons of trash that the U.S. produces every year, about half of it goes straight to landfills, according to the EPA. Why is that bad? Landfill waste is responsible for about 11 percent of methane emissions (methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide) and is expected to increase about 70 percent by 2050, according to Reuters.

Companies are facing more pressure to get their operations set up to meet sustainability standards—and many companies don’t have the tech to manage, measure, and report sustainability performance, according to a report from Accenture. How can real estate owners and operators get a clearer view of their trash? The answer is AI.

Tech startups in the waste management space are focusing on using data-driven approaches. For example, Fifth Wall’s portco RoadRunner, tracks exactly what a business is throwing away and the most efficient way to recycle it. On average RoadRunner's visibility into waste logistics saves customers around 15 percent in service costs. Plus, time and money isn’t wasted recycling items that just end up in a landfill.

The big picture: Nimble startups, like RoadRunner, are needed to make a massive disruption in the waste industry which traditionally has relied little on technology.