Shopping Mall Waste | Bjornson Designs

Shopping Mall Waste Stream Profile

Whether you refer to them as a shopping center, shopping mall, strip mall, mall complex, or outlet mall, we’re really talking about the same concept: a centralized collection of stores offering their various wares for sale. Shopping mall waste and recycling streams are typically comprised of:

cardboard
paper
plastic
styrofoam
wood
organic waste (if they have a food court)
and general waste.

Malls tend to produce a high volume of low density waste in a short period of time. They may utilize a single waste collection point, or have multiple waste collection areas. Depending on their size, malls will use a mix of front load bins, roll off bins and compactors to manage their waste stream. Shopping centres will also produce a significant amount of construction debris when stores are undergoing renovations.

Front Load Dumpsters

Front load dumpsters are the most commonly used bin type for handling shopping mall waste streams. Front load bins have the advantage of a small footprint, meaning that they can be placed almost anywhere, and not take up a lot of real estate. You can also fit multiple bins within a small area, enabling you to separate material into different waste streams, such as general garbage, cardboard, organics and other recycling. The service frequency may be increased to handle large volumes of material.

In this way, shopping mall locations with restricted space can manage their waste needs without using large roll off bin or large compactor equipment. If space is at a premium, small compactor units can be employed to crush and pack material into front load bins. Keep in mind the bin still has to be lifted safely, so there are some load limit restrictions on the weight of material that can be packed into the dumpster.

Roll Off Containers

Roll off waste containers are used to handle shopping mall demolition or construction debris when new stores are being renovated. These bins are often placed in the parking lot or in a loading dock. As such, they may have a narrow pickup time window. This will require reliable service from the hauler and coordination with the dock master.

For mall renovations, all sizes of roll off containers can be utilized. Specialized 10 or 15 yard concrete bins will be used to segregate and recycle concrete. 12, 20, 30 and 40 yard containers will be used for general debris removal and designated material recycling loads.

Compactors

Large compactor units placed at the waste collection points are frequently utilized to lower hauling costs. Compactors will crush and pack regular mall waste into a much smaller volume, thus increasing the density, and minimizing the hauling cost.

The key to effective compactor management when handling shopping mall waste and recycling streams is to maximize the payload per trip. It is not practical to have an employee standing all day by the compactor, so common practice is to assign a staff member the responsibility of periodically checking the unit. These personnel will have other primary duties, so going to see how much material is in the compactor won’t rank very high on the priority list. You can easily end up with a full compactor and a costly emergency service.

A typical solution to managing a shopping mall waste or recycling compactor is to take an educated guess on service needs based on historical assumptions, and schedule pickups based on that. The fault with this approach to managing the waste streams is that it erodes the benefits of using a compactor by not maximizing the hauling payload weights. Set schedules can help prevent a compactor from being unusable because it’s full, but the cost is an increase in hauling expenses and lowered payload tonnages per trip.

Dynamic Compactor Monitoring

“Dynamic Compactor Monitoring” can solve issues with shopping mall waste or recycling compactors. In practice, the system more than pays for itself each month AND saves you money.

Waste in Motion has partnered with a leader in compactor monitoring equipment, and we are proud to offer this unique solution for our clients.

How does DYNAMIC COMPACTOR MONITORING work?

Your mall compactor is remote live monitored 24 hours per day
Analytic software compiles data each time your unit is cycled
When certain conditions are met, the system triggers an alert
An analyst reviews the data
They will confirm that the is compactor indeed full, and not “bridging”
A service order is emailed to the hauler
Your container is serviced within that haulers established time frame

Dynamic Compactor Monitoring Benefits

Our partner technology is designed to:

Provide an immediate Return on Investment
Minimize the number of hauls
Maximize compactor tonnages
Identify “Bridging” scenarios, and give clients solution advice
Automatically dispatch a pickup ahead of time
Track your individual compactor data over time to identify trends
Provide meaningful KPI’s and Metrics
Not require modification of the compactor equipment
Not void your warranty

We have options where there is no upfront equipment cost for your compactor monitoring. Shopping mall waste and recycling doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive!

Let Waste in Motion make you a COST SAVINGS HERO! Call us today!