Changing Waste for Good 2020 Success Stories
To put it lightly, 2020 was a turbulent year for all. During those challenging months, National Waste Associates (NWA) worked tirelessly for you, to ensure there was at least one thing you never had to worry about – your waste. In this article, we focus on some client success highlights, and showcase the investments we’ve made to further improve our service and to help ensure we all come out even stronger in 2021 and beyond as we work tirelessly and continuously to offer you the very best waste management service.
COVID-19 Disaster Recovery Response
In the waste industry, the COVID-19 pandemic created an extremely complicated situation, with thousands of service changes needed across all sectors and states. In the first two weeks, in an operation spearheaded by our department leads for Corporate Services and Compliance, NWA completed 85% of all service pauses and reductions for customers whose doors had to close, or who suffered drastic reductions in business volume. This greatly reduced our clients’ exposure to unnecessary costs.
Showcasing NWA’S Compliance Manager – Meredith Wert
In 2018, NWA invested in establishing a full-time Compliance Manager position. We’re pleased to report that position was filled by Meredith Wert. The investment in Meredith paid dividends during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she co-managed the operation to mitigate the financial impacts for our customers, while keeping you in full compliance.
What does your role normally entail?
Compliance management involves discovering national, state and municipal trash or recycling requirements that will affect our customers’ operations either now, or in the future. I track trends in the recycling industry and also assist our customers with filing waivers, submitting annual reports, submitting annual plans and zero waste initiatives.
What did your COVID-19 response consist of?
We tracked the effects of COVID-19 for the waste industry before it even hit the US. Theoretical scenarios were played through, to develop firm procedures to handle shut-downs. The actual shut-downs and restrictions were far from universal. States that were open could have a county or municipality that was closed. An industry open in one state could be closed in another. I tracked and updated this information twice daily, keeping in constant communication with Corporate Services, who then shared it with our clients, to ensure services were being reduced or temporarily stopped as needed. This helped us to proactively save our clients thousands of dollars in costs.
What do you like about working for NWA?
The depth of knowledge available in the company is impressive and a great benefit. If I have a question about the industry, there is always someone here who can answer it without me having to research, you don’t get that just anywhere. I attribute that to the decades of experience our managers have and the 4 generations that our company was built upon.
What makes NWA different to other waste management companies?
At NWA, we see ourselves as an extension of our customers’ company. When we take on a new customer, their goals become our goals. During the pandemic, we actually added additional people with many working overtime to carry out the service reductions needed, putting our clients’ needs above our own.
Making Savings Happen for Our Customers – Right Sizing
In what industry experts described as a time of mass hysteria for the waste industry, the team at NWA kept their heads and carried on doing what they do best. Right sizing is the task of continually monitoring container tonnages and schedules, optimizing them to increase the efficiency of the collections so that each container is at, or close to, their optimal weight.
When your operations generate large volumes of waste, it really pays to have someone actively “watching your weights”. And with our regular reporting, we provide total transparency into the work we’re doing to bring your number of hauls down and maximize your payloads.
Highlights of our 2020 Right Sizing Programs
Customer Industry Type | Yds overserviced per year | Trips saved per year |
Food Service | 37,752 | 4,836 |
Convenience Store | 6,136 | 312 |
Self Storage | 19,344 | 2,756 |
Across all customer accounts, NWA identified and reduced 60,000 cubic yards of containers that were being overserviced, resulting in considerable annual cost savings for our customers.
By doing so, we also reduced the cumulative number of haulage trips by over 7,000, minimizing our customer’s environmental impacts. Vehicle-related greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution were reduced through fewer pickups, and sites encountered less noise pollution and disruption, together with greater site safety thanks to fewer vehicle movements.
Fighting Back Against Hauler Price Increases
Completing their diligent work of triple-checking vendor invoices, our accounts department constantly looks for any service charge increases that are out of contractual terms. They pass these onto to the Vendor Services team, who take them up with the vendors, fighting any price increases on your behalf. In 2020, the results of this hard work were:
$108,138.72 cumulative savings throughout the year,
from 1,553 attempted increases
NWA Customer Survey Results
We reach out to our customers twice a year, to help us understand how you perceive the service that we provide. The responses from this latest survey were excellent and speak for themself.
78% of those surveyed felt that NWA responded immediately to their needs, and 80% said that they appreciate having an Account Manager that is dedicated to them. As a result of this, a huge 86% of respondents felt that they finally had someone who knew their business and specific location needs. NWA believes in the power of personal relationships. Our dedicated Account Managers handle their customer relations with a full understanding of the nuances involved in managing each customer location directly, so that you always have one point of contact for your operational needs. Those relationships assist us in not only meeting your goals, but in being able to move quickly and in your best interest.
Service Excellence
NWA managed 99.76% of all collections on-time and successfully throughout the year. By maintaining excellent relations with our vendor network, we were also able to ensure that our customers benefited from undisrupted service. In 2020, we achieved a 99.69% success rate for vendor service continuity.
Reducing Your Environmental Impact
NWA is dedicated to reducing your operations’ environmental impact. We survey your locations for recycling, diversion and reuse opportunities that go beyond what is required of you by the relevant legislation, and then we use our vast network of suppliers to find the top professionals for each aspect of the process. In 2020, these efforts led to a 55% diversion from landfill rate across all of our customers.
Investing in the Exceptional
While many waste management companies spent the year in defense mode, NWA looked forward. We invested heavily in employee development, creating a designated full time training position to focus on improving skills, in order to provide exceptional customer service and take what is currently being done to the next level. Training programs have been amplified across all levels of the company, from new staff orientation, all the way up through to the management level.
Customer Retention Wins
The result of all of this work shows in NWA’s customer retentions in 2020.
Customers who signed up for another term with NWA represented 45% of total annual revenue. 100% of customers that renewed in 2020 are on second terms or above, with the oldest having partnered successfully with NWA for over a decade.
Transparency and Real-time Access to Your Management Data
Over the past two years, NWA has developed an online reporting tool to give you access to your management data at your fingertips. This tool, NWA360 is available to all our customers, allowing you to view your operational and financial data for your entire portfolio, all the way down to the individual site level.
National Waste Associates – Dedicated to You
During an incredibly challenging year, NWA uniquely positioned itself to react quickly to the challenges that you, our clients faced. We are dedicated to ensuring that you are receiving services tailored to your needs, and the best possible price, while helping to ensure your future goals are met.
From the entire team at NWA, we would like to thank you for your continued business, and we look forward to working with you in 2021 and beyond.
If you have any questions or would like to reach out to us,
call 1-888-692-5005 x3 or
email sales@nationalwaste.com.
©2021 National Waste Associates