At GT, we pride ourselves on combining our passion with technical expertise to deliver customized and cost-effective solutions for sustainable materials management projects. GT’s organics services include feasibility studies, benchmarking, evaluation of public-private partnerships, greenhouse gas inventory studies, development of diversion programs, targeted waste sorts, behavior change campaigns, and collection. As consultants, we advise our clients on implementing solutions that will help reach their environmental and social responsibility targets, reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and provide environmental benefit impacts.

Based on decades of helping cities, counties, and districts achieve solid waste management goals, GT knows communities, institutions, and businesses are committed to decreasing dependency on landfills. We can assist you in assessing your organic processing landscape to evaluate throughput, capacity, and potential for expanding the processing of food scraps and other organics. GT’s team is experienced in using ArcGIS mapping to present spatial distribution, demonstrating optimization of location for planned and future infrastructure.

Whether you need a waste audit and/or a full “dumpster dive” waste characterization analysis, we are your team. Finding ways to reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost is vital to becoming more sustainable, reducing landfill costs, and saving greenhouse gas emissions.

GT conducts customized waste characterizations for projects small and large, ranging from building-level to statewide assessments. Waste characterizations can be a vital tool for discovering valuable data about your waste, recycling, and/or organic stream. These studies provide data about contamination rates, capture rates, specific locations where contamination is the greatest, which single-use items contribute most to the non-divertible materials generated, and more.

The data can be used to determine the value of your commodity streams, as well as the volume of specific materials available in a waste stream. The information we gather from these studies can be used to establish a data baseline, improve programs or signage, modify purchasing habits, or justify educational campaigns or the purchase of new equipment. We use internationally accepted standard test methods (ASTM D5231-92) to develop our methodology for each waste characterization project. Our team listens to the goals you would like to achieve by conducting a waste characterization and develops a tailored action plan to achieve your goals that deliver statistically significant results in a cost-effective manner that minimizes disruptions to normal activities where the characterization will be conducted.

A feasibility study will help you find out if a project can be done (is it possible?… is it justified?) and suggest possible alternative solutions. All types of projects can be studied, and we are here to guide you through the process of assessing problems, constraints, possible alternatives, and advantages and disadvantages. It’s important to evaluate not only whether a system can work but also whether a system will work.

GT can assist you with operational, technical, and economic (cost/benefit analysis) studies across the materials management universe.

Capture rate studies are one tool in your toolbox to measure and guide program efforts. It measures how much is being collected versus how much could be. This is a key performance indicator that tells you how you are doing. They can be calculated for individual materials or the entire diversion stream.

At GT, we can show you how to calculate capture rates, key considerations and flaws to avoid, how to collect quality data and the implications of how these data can inform effective program design and policy compliance.

The term Zero Waste can mean different things to communities and companies. Our team is trained and professionally certified to develop Zero Waste plans through the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), as well as TRUE Advisor certified through Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) to certify your programs and facilities as zero waste.

GT prepared the first Zero Waste plan in Ohio to be formally adopted through a resolution by the City of Oberlin City Council. GT also developed the second city-wide zero waste plan for the City of Bexley in Ohio.

Our Zero Waste plans identify barriers and address gaps and overlaps in systems to minimize the impacts of waste and maximize the benefits of zero waste. Working alongside you, we will culminate in a strategic planning process that establishes a mission, goals, objectives, and phased recommendations to create your roadmap to zero waste.

Rethinking how we use materials leads to new ways of creating value. We have the opportunity to eliminate waste, circulate products at their highest value, and regenerate natural systems. Governments and businesses can design circular economy opportunities that will result in economic benefits as well as significant environmental and social benefits.

GT is committed to establishing ambitious yet actionable sustainability plans that deliver quality results that achieve results toward the triple bottom line. GT guides our clients through a proven benchmarking and goal-development strategy, moving organizations beyond the status quo. Our Sustainability Plans and Assessments provide our clients with a thorough, step-by-step guide to achieving practical sustainability goals.

GT applies proven practical techniques to maximize long-term sustainable results. Esthetics, functionality, and budget should not be sacrificed to achieve healthier, cleaner processes for our clients. A partnership with the GT will take your sustainability program to the next level for streamlined, efficient, fruitful, forward-thinking results.

Reporting is not always routine. Our clients want to make sure they report accurate data to regulators and their stakeholders. We provide our reporting service to supplement your team.

We dig into the numbers and provide a report that meets and most often exceeds regulatory compliance standards. Our services can include custom survey development and distribution, data collection, and data analysis for waste, recycling, and organics management programming.

The accounting of revenues received and expenditures made can be complex when using state-mandated forms and specific categories for line item expenses. GT provides the team with the ability to complete your accounting reports on time.

Understanding greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) can help reduce carbon footprints. Our team can help you calculate, report, and enhance GHG accounting.

A variety of federal, state, and local grants are available that could support your project. We write compelling letters of intent and grant applications. Let us write the entire request, including budgets, or let us work on certain sections. We are here to tell your story and explain your reason for applying for a grant.

Wastes generated by normal household activities are excluded from the definition of hazardous waste (Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations Part 261.4). Even though it is excluded from Subtitle C, household hazardous waste is regulated under Subtitle D as solid waste on the state and local levels. Proper management of household hazardous waste avoids potential risks.

GT can conduct a high-level overview of your existing HHW program to determine how the program is performing compared to other HHW programs, develop RFPs and bids for HHW disposal vendors, develop a standard operating procedure for your facility, or evaluate opportunities to transition the HHW program to a Convenience Center model capable of collecting a wide variety of hard-to-recycle materials in addition to HHW material.

We help colleges and universities in reducing waste and contributing to a more sustainable future. GT Environmental is a responsive, skilled, forward-thinking, relationship-focused environmental consulting firm dedicated to our client’s success. We embark on sustainability projects with a rich depth of applied knowledge, comprehensive thoroughness, and an untethered enthusiasm to find the answers clients want and options they didn’t expect. We are well-versed in implementing waste reduction initiatives and establishing waste minimization techniques on collegiate campuses.

Our guiding principles for helping universities achieve their goals include

• Boots-on-the-ground experience and client-specific data are invaluable for developing effective plans.
• We put the time in at the start of the project to know and listen to our client. Building the relationship ensures no stone is unturned.
• Not every campus waste management system is the same, and infrastructure varies both on and off campuses across the nation. What works at one campus may not work for another. Our team is experienced in tailoring action plans.
• Passion for sustainability incentivizes us to help clients create the strongest possible program and ensures positive impacts are being made.

GT is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).

Crafting a bid, RFP, or RFQ is a strategic process involving a series of steps of development, solicitation, evaluation, and award. GT will help you through those steps. We research and identify what aligns with your capabilities and goals to help you find the most qualified contractor for the job. The bid lays the groundwork for work scope, needs, budget, and timing.

Stakeholders seeking to tackle a big, systemic issue usually find that it is so broad and so complex that no single person or organization has authority over all its components. Instead, the system is made up of parts that have varying autonomy and interact and influence each other to different degrees. Individuals and organizations can influence the broader system through sharing ideas, mobilizing resources, and building alliances. One of the best ways to generate understanding is through multi-stakeholder dialogue with a trusted facilitator. Having GT as your facilitator unleashes ideas and the capacity to address any problem in new ways through new collaborations.

An often-quoted African proverb says that, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” Let us help you engage and build true alignment and commitment amongst stakeholders for your projects.