Date: January 25, 2024
More than 6.8 million people call Indiana home. Thousands of organizations and Fortune 500 companies have planted their roots here, with Indiana serving as their national headquarters. Envita Solutions is proud to be one of those businesses operating to provide Hoosiers with a better life. Their Indianapolis headquarters is the hub for their total waste management solutions. They do business based on the mission to protect human health and the environment to build a safer, more sustainable world. It’s a similar mission to that of Circular Indiana, formerly known as the Indiana Recycling Coalition. Circular Indiana is focused on education and advocacy to strengthen the circular economy through waste reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting. The Circular Indiana team recently sat down with Envita Solutions Senior Director of Operations and Sustainability, Shaun Miller, to spotlight the work being done to protect those in Indiana and across the country.
“In North America today Envita Solutions has approximately 4,000 customer facilities. Of those customer facilities, 60% of the 1.5 million tons of waste we manage goes to landfill diversions or other recycling means,” said Miller. “In Indiana proper, we have around 300 customer facilities and 20,000 tons of waste managed.”
Envita’s deep knowledge of total waste management is backed by an audited supplier network along with internal functional expertise in the most difficult waste streams. However, there is no cookie-cutter template to achieve sustainability. Miller explains how each company they work with is different and sustainability goals cannot be met overnight.
“There’s no magic key to go strictly from zero waste to landfill to zero waste,” said Miller. “It’s all a transformation of habits. It’s a reconfiguration, a reprogramming of what is accepted.”
The way people think about sustainability has changed over the years. Part of that reprogramming is expanding on familiar principles. For example, reduce, reuse, recycle is a phrase that has been ingrained in society since it was launched in the 70s. However, Miller said it’s an outdated way of thinking. Instead, it should be the five R’s of sustainability: reduce, reuse, recycle, redesign, and rethink.
“The fourth R is redesign. Things are hard to recycle because they were never designed to be recycled or reused so we have to look and do things differently,” said Miller. “The best place to make that change is at the producer level. The fifth R is rethink. Rethink your priorities, rethink your values.”
At its core, Envita Solutions approaches each customer with innovative ideas and a solutions-based mindset to help them achieve their sustainability goals. That can be seen through partnerships with local organizations like Carrier, whom they began working with in 2020. In September of that year, Envita certified Carrier’s first zero waste to landfill facility. Three years later, they have now certified over a dozen facilities.
“Carrier is also a great example of one of the customers Envita is working hand in hand with to create a circular program for the products they put into their customer facilities. When a Carrier truck goes through one of their customer facilities they can say, when you’re done with this, we will take it back and we will give you 100% guarantee that it will be recycled,” said Miller.
You can watch the full Circular Indiana interview with Envita Solutions Senior Director of Operations and Sustainability Shaun Miller by visiting this link or viewing the video below.
Learn more about how Envita Solutions transforms its customers’ complex waste challenges into sustainable results or connect with one of their experts to find out how Envita can help your business.