Is Your Waste Provider Doing All They Can To Help You?

Now that business has settled into the “new normal” with COVID-19, if you’re like most companies your business has declined. Is your current waste and recycling management provider doing all they can to assist you? In this article, we have outlined some key questions you should ask of your provider to make sure you’re getting all the support that you need.

Are They Reducing Your Management Burden?

Waste volumes and schedules will almost certainly be affected across all of your locations during this time. This can be incredibly challenging to manage when there are many sites in your portfolio, adding an additional administrative burden when you have other more urgent matters to attend to.

Check what your waste provider is doing to save you money on your waste bills by optimizing pickups and service schedules. Are they proactively proposing and implementing these changes for you, without you needing to chase them?

Are They Reducing Service Levels To Reflect Lower Volumes?

Your service provider should be actively reducing service levels and analyzing where schedules can be reduced to a fraction of the normal level, reduced to an on-call service, or temporarily suspended to reduce your waste costs while operations are running at a lower volume or temporarily suspended.

They will need to complete an analysis of the current business activity and waste generated at each location and for each material type to prevent excessive pickups, while ensuring that trash doesn’t start building up and causing a problem on site.

Are They Analyzing Peak Times Across All Your Sites?

As well as business activity, operating schedules will almost certainly have been affected by COVID-19. Your service provider should be analyzing new peak business times and amending pick up days to reflect these new schedules on a site-by-site basis.

They should also be comparing pick up schedules against site deliveries to ensure there is no interference, and that schedules allow for packaging to be discarded optimally and your sites kept clean and clear.

Are They Offering Pro-Rated Billing?

While making all of these service level reductions and schedule changes across your portfolio, your service provider should be pro-rating your billing to reflect the lower volumes and activity.

If they’re not doing this for you, then your waste bills will be excessively high for the lower volumes of waste that your business is generating during this period.

How Are They Ensuring That Your Business Remains Compliant?

Legislation relating to business operations is being updated at a startling rate across all levels of government, from City up to State. It is vital that you are kept abreast of all of these rules so that you can be confident that every one of your locations is in compliance. Many waste companies don’t provide this advice to their customers, so it’s important to check that yours is keeping vigilant for your business.

Ask your provider if they have an in house regulatory and compliance team that’s keeping you current with changes in regulations and procedures.

You should also ask yourself – Did they help you manage all of the initial changes that needed to be considered?

Do They Provide Compliance Guidance Free of Charge?

Compliance shouldn’t come with an extra price tag, but although some waste providers do have compliance departments, not all of them provide specific recommendations relevant to their customers without additional charges.

Ask your provider if they have an additional charge for compliance guidance, and if so, what does this extra cost cover? Are the recommendations they provide specific to your business or these simply general recommendations across the board.

What NWA Does For Our Customers

National Waste Associates (NWA) is a full service management company. This means that we can harness the expertise across all of our departments to actively control our clients’ costs based on their evolving needs on a weekly basis and keep them compliant.

Since the pandemic took hold, we’ve expanded our compliance and vendor management teams to implement changes of service tailored to the needs of each location, while ensuring we keep abreast of the legislative changes that are evolving across the entire country to safeguard our customers from being caught off-guard.

With daily briefings from our Compliance Manager, our Project and Account Managers are able to make pro-active recommendations on reduction or suspension programs, saving our clients’ money and better managing their sites. All of this advice is provided free of charge to our customers and is a fundamental element of our service.

Why Full Service Waste Management Matters

In times of crisis, the value of a full-service management company shines through. You need a waste provider that can give you complete coverage, together with the forward thinking to proactively mitigate significant problems when they arise. When times are good, a bare bones service provided by a waste broker might be sufficient, but when things get more challenging, you’ll be grateful to have the comprehensive support that a full-service management company like NWA provides.

If you’re not seeing the value in your current provider’s assistance, perhaps it’s time for a change… call us at 1-888-692-5005, or email sales@nationalwaste.com to speak with one of our experts.