Waste management and recycling contracts are often awarded via tender. This structured process is aimed at enabling the business to appoint the best service provider, by being fair and transparent, and including stringent selection criteria.
How can you be sure you’re appointing the best waste management service provider?
It is fairly easy to distinguish between fly-by-night contractors and legitimate contenders in the first evaluation stage. Once the shortlist has been decided, however, it can be more difficult to determine which waste management service provider will truly deliver on your zero waste to landfill targets.
It requires specialist knowledge and experience to manage waste and recycling appropriately, especially taking into account industry-specific challenges. For example, the priorities and legal requirements are not the same for hospitals, hotels, large office buildings, or shopping malls. Appointing the wrong service provider based only on persuasive marketing-speak can be a costly mistake.
In order to filter out which tender submissions are realistic, and which ones will expose your business to risk and cause problems in the long term – be sure to ask the right questions.
5 Key questions to ask during the tender clarification meeting
1. What is the waste diversion performance at your Top 3 clients (in a similar industry as yours), and how did you achieve these?
In answering this question, potential service providers should refer to any problems they encountered when they started on the premises. Starting from this baseline, they should clearly explain what steps they took to reach their current performance.
2. How does your reporting system work, and what results are included?
It is extremely important that the service provider has a robust reporting system. They should be able to provide you as client with direct access to auditable data, and regular reports on the waste collected and recycled from your premises.
3. How are these results verified?
As a client, you want to be confident that the service provider has the correct compliance certificates, and that the reported data is independently verified. You want full clarity from cradle-to-grave – from what types of waste has been generated on your premises, how the waste is sorted and processed, all the way to their final destinations.
4. What new zero waste to landfill solutions have you investigated in the last 6 months?
Many service providers propose impressive solutions that look great on paper, but which are not necessarily suitable for the client. For example, most waste-to-energy or waste-to biofuel solutions are not technically or economically viable yet. Ask for proof that the solution has been successfully implemented in South Africa or another developing country.
5. What is the depth of your solutions to implement a zero waste to landfill strategy?
It is important that the service provider doesn’t base their whole Zero Waste To Landfill strategy on only one facility, or one solution. There needs to be a depth and diversity in the options presented – so that even if one facility closes down, or one solution fails, they can still enable you as client to meet your waste management and recycling targets.
At WastePlan, we are committed to diverting away from landfills and finding innovative solutions for the remaining waste. We even publish our annual overall diversion ratio, which is up from 81% in 2021 to 89% in 2022. This means that, together with our clients, we have found solutions for 89% of the waste that we handle.
If you are still not sure of your Zero Waste To Landfill goal or if your Zero Waste To Landfill goals are being achieved, let’s work together and get you the clarification you deserve 
