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Before changing the waste route, establish the baseline
Before asking whether a different waste route would be cheaper, I would put the current one on a single page.
01 · The arrangement
Start with the actual arrangement
Not just the gate fee. The actual arrangement.
What do the invoices cover: collection, transport, treatment and rejects? What does a “tonne” mean on that bill: collected or accepted material?
02 · Capacity and contract
Write down the volume and the limits
How much is actually handled, how large are the peaks, and what happens when the service is unavailable?
What does the contract commit you to, when can it change, and how much spare capacity is there?
03 · Existing value
Count the value already in place
Is the material already sold or used for feed, compost or energy? That existing value belongs in the comparison too.
04 · The alternative
Give the alternative something to beat
Then add the question I find most useful: if production grows, or the current outlet closes, what would you actually do instead?
That gives an alternative something real to compete with. Black soldier fly (BSF) bioconversion may deserve a closer look. Improving the current route may be the better use of effort.
05 · The blind spot
Name what is least visible
Which part of your waste arrangement is least visible today: the full cost, the capacity limit or the fallback option?
Keep exploring
Related topics and pages
- BSF business course — where the costs, income and case validation behind a route are taught
- Five questions for a fair biowaste route comparison — the comparison that follows once the baseline is written down
- Articles library — the written guides this post joins
Read next
- Treat the waste route as infrastructure before a growth story — why the route is infrastructure, and how each stage of capital should earn the next commitment
- Before spending on design: the biowaste decision — the three practical outputs that turn the facts into a decision before design spending
- Five questions for a fair biowaste route comparison — five questions that put competing biowaste proposals on the same basis
- Is BSF the right answer for your biowaste stream? The evaluation I actually run — the five-question test for whether a stream clears the bar
Next step
Put the current route on one page
Manna can help assemble the current handling cost, volumes and constraints into a baseline that a possible alternative has to answer to.