For large companies with multiple locations, waste removal may not seem like the most important utility compared to other expenses such as energy, water, or sewage costs. However, many companies wind up overpaying, and those waste removal costs can add up over time. Multiply those costs across dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of locations, and you’re looking at potentially extraordinary expenses.

To help you mitigate this concern and save more money on waste management, outsourced waste management solutions can make waste removal processes more efficient across all of your locations.

What Are Outsourced Waste Management Services?

Business owners always look for ways to cut costs on everything from goods and services to utilities for their properties. However, waste removal is often overlooked because it falls outside the property, unlike more immediately required services such as electric utilities or water. The fact is that many companies are overpaying for waste removal. They may not be aware of it, let alone consider alternatives to make these services more cost-effective. Enter outsourced waste management services.

Outsourced waste management entails working with a dedicated company to manage all aspects of waste removal, including:

• Collection
• Disposal
• Transportation
• Waste material monitoring

Instead of managing these tasks on your own across multiple locations, a reliable company can negotiate with haulers and help determine how to make all of these processes more efficient and cost-effective. The company you work with will then serve as a partner to consult with on everything from container configurations to contracts with local haulers and contractors.

Using outsourced waste management solutions, companies can:

• Cut down on business waste and running expenses.
• Ensure that waste is disposed of properly.
• Reduce environmental liability as a result of decreased waste output.

As your business expands to new locations, these services can also help make sure waste management for each property remains consistently affordable and efficient. Some of the specific ways in which outsourced waste management companies can help optimize waste removal include:

Thorough Audits

When working with several locations, there are many aspects to consider in waste management systems. Experts can use cutting-edge technology coupled with their knowledge and proven methods to analyze both services and invoices. In the process, they look for any potential issues and inefficiencies.

Advisory Services

Based on the results of an audit, professionals can then provide more formal advice to help improve existing systems in place. In addition, they can serve as the sole point of contact for multiple hauling companies. They can even negotiate with them to obtain better pricing based on comparable local rates.

Ongoing Delivery of Services

Your waste management company will also be able to provide long-term services with multi-year contracts to ensure that you never pay more than you need to for waste removal. They can also scale services with you as you continue to expand. This helps prevent your waste management services from growing increasingly complex and difficult to manage.

With the right company behind your business’s waste removal at every location, you can benefit from consistently reliable and affordable services.

What Types of Businesses Benefit Most from Outsourced Waste Management Solutions?

As businesses seek growth, they could establish as many as dozens, hundreds, or thousands of locations across the country. Over time, it can be difficult to manage waste removal for all of these locations; there are too many parties and components involved. Even a few locations spread across different geographic locations can be a challenge to manage in some cases. This is especially true for companies without any specific experience in (or strict company standards for) waste management.

If you’re working with multiple locations and may not have the resources needed to manage waste removal across these locations, outsourced waste management solutions can be invaluable. Suppose that your business manages locations in different areas. Then you may be working with separate haulers, each of which could be charging different prices and taking advantage of you — potentially without you ever becoming aware of it. With the right waste management company, you can benefit from ample resources to properly manage each location. They will serve as the main point of contact and billing for multiple haulers. This will consolidate communications and pricing for all locations, so you don’t pay more than your neighbors.

On the other hand, companies with as many as 10,000 locations may not need these services. Companies of this size may have an internal department dedicated to waste management. That department would be responsible for ensuring waste removal remains efficacious for all locations.

The issue is that many businesses fall in between those extremes of having only a few locations and being large corporations. This can leave them uncertain about how to approach waste management as they grow. Ultimately, if your business is expanding and you’re concerned about negotiating with multiple contractors for different locations, outsourcing your waste management can be a vital step to take.

How Outsourced Waste Management Solutions Can Help

If you’re considering outsourcing waste management services to an experienced and resourceful company, there are a couple of specific ways they can help develop the ideal solution. Through a comprehensive audit and comprehensive custom solutions that help reduce costs and optimize efficiency, you’ll be able to see considerable cost savings and get the most from your waste removal, without having to manage it yourself.

Waste Management Audits Identify Issues

In a waste audit, waste management experts will look at your billing along with your on-site containers. Based on their findings for each location, they may determine if a more efficient container configuration would be more appropriate for a particular location. For example, one of your locations may have eight yard containers that a waste removal service empties once per week. Auditors might find that you’re able to save more by having four yard containers emptied twice per week.

Cost Management

In addition to on-site configuration, auditors look at the total cost of waste management services to the company. If they find that you’re overpaying for services, there are ways they can help cut down on waste removal costs based on the local market. For instance, you might find that you’re spending a certain dollar amount per haul or per ton that’s suspiciously high. Auditors may even discover that neighboring businesses are paying less for the same services. In this case, your waste management company could work to negotiate a better price with the hauler.

Solving Inefficiencies for Larger Businesses

For larger businesses with many locations, multiple waste haulers are also used in different markets. This often means that individual landfill agreements are in place for each hauler. With so many hauler relationships across many locations, it can be especially difficult to effectively manage waste removal. Additionally, you may have to worry about the contracts you have with each hauler expiring at different times.

Each hauler contract has its own cost escalations and evergreen clauses to automatically renew upon expiring. Additionally, the costs are likely to increase incrementally every year. This could lead to a situation where you start with a contract at $100 and, within a few years, find that you’re paying as much as $500. Because this price increase happens so subtly year over year, you may not even notice the expense until you’ve spent thousands you could have otherwise saved.

Outsourced Waste Management Solutions Help Reduce Costs

After conducting an audit, your company can begin implementing the recommended outsourced waste management solutions. This entails developing a unique system for your business that manages all contracts factors, including:

• Hauler services
• Contract expirations
• Renegotiation processes
• Liability compliance
• Myriad other factors that go into waste management

Ordinarily, you would be responsible for managing all of these aspects on your own. But with the help of these experts, you can spend more time, energy, and money on growing your business. Some cost-related benefits include:

Simplified Contact

Your outsourced waste management company should become the sole contact for all of your locations’ haulers. Suppose that you have haulers from several cities or waste management companies. In that case, your waste management services provider will serve as the point of contact they reach out to regarding any waste removal contracts and services.

A Single Bill for All Locations

To further simplify services, your provider should consolidate billing for all of your locations every month. This keeps payment processes and total spend consistently transparent. For example, say that you’re paying $1,000 each for ten different locations. You’ll only need to pay a single invoice for $10,000 once per month instead of making ten separate $1,000 payments on different dates.

In-Depth Reporting Capabilities on One Portal

After simplifying contact with haulers and billing for waste removal services, your company can then simplify reporting for all locations using a single platform. Many waste haulers have different portals that customers would need to use — and that’s if they have a portal at all. But a good waste management company will combine them into a single portal. This will give you clear insight into services for all locations. You’ll be able to see how much waste was removed from each location along with other analytics, which can help further gauge the efficiency of these services.

Ultimately, with a complete waste management solution that consists of reliable contact, billing, and reporting capabilities, you can save a considerable amount of money. You can also reap the benefits of added visibility and overall efficiency with a centralized and streamlined solution in place for all locations.

Avoid Potentially Costly Legal Issues with Waste Disposal

Another added benefit of outsourced franchise waste management is the ability to maintain compliance with local and national laws pertaining to certain types of waste.

Create a Plan for Managing Electronic Waste

For example, a growing number of states have regulations around electronic waste, also known as e-waste. Electronic waste is a particularly big issue for many offices and other workplaces working with large amounts of electronic devices and equipment. Today, businesses regularly need to upgrade their electronics. This can result in obsolete equipment taking up space within a facility as it gathers dust.

Many businesses may want to do what they can to eliminate e-waste. But it’s often illegal to throw this waste out with other trash as it requires compliant disposal methods. Devices such as old printers, laptops, TVs, and CRT monitors shouldn’t simply sit around your offices. But it’s equally important to avoid breaking the law when removing them from the premises. However, proper disposal of e-waste can take more time, money, and energy that your business might not have to spare. Instead of illegally disposing of e-waste at any location, outsourced waste removal services can help manage this process and ensure electronics are properly handled.

Stay on Top of Regulated Hazardous and Non-Hazardous Waste

Other types of waste could also require special care, including a wide variety of hazardous waste materials. Solvents, metal finishes, petroleum, chemicals, medical waste, and many others require both legally compliant and efficient waste removal solutions. Other types of non-hazardous waste could also pose risks if they fall in with the rest of your waste stream. Non-hazardous wastes could include:

• Agricultural waste such as animal bedding and manure
• Construction materials like glass and wood
• Batteries made without lithium and mercury
• Tires and other scrap materials

Regardless of the types of waste products your facilities produce, it’s crucial to make sure your business is regularly compliant and uses safe and secure disposal methods to remove them.

With the help of a dependable waste management company, you can remain compliant while freeing up more space in your offices.

How to Get Started With Outsourced Waste Management Solutions

If you’re considering getting started with outsourced waste management, the first step is to schedule an audit with waste management experts. They will be able to look at your current configuration and identify any existing issues. You will also be able to see an in-depth formal report of the audit. This will provide recommendations for improving your waste management system.

From there, experts will be able to work with you to develop a solution for each of your locations based on your business’s individual needs. They will be able to act as dedicated project managers and manage all paperwork, documentation, and negotiations with waste removal services.

Turn to the Waste Management Experts at Util Auditors

If you’re responsible for managing multiple locations for your business, don’t underestimate the importance of cost-effective and efficient franchise waste management. Depending on the needs of your specific business and locations, we can conduct a thorough audit to assess your current waste removal solution. From there, we can determine how to further simplify and reduce the costs of these services with a unique solution that’s tailored to your business.

At Util Auditors, LLC, we have plenty of experience identifying issues with utilities and services. Our team excels at creating personalized plans to optimize those services. If your business needs a customized, comprehensive waste management solution, we’re here to meet those needs on a long-term basis. We have a long and successful track record of lowering monthly expenses and recovering refunds from waste removal providers. We also create management programs for other utilities such as telecommunications, natural gas, electricity, water and sewer, and many others. With that level of expertise behind your business, you know that your waste management services are in the right hands.

If you would like to learn more about our outsourced waste management solutions, contact us today. We’ll connect you with one of our experts so you can find out what we can do for your company.