倒垃圾事小 節約成本是關鍵

To save money, offices around the U.S. are adding a new chore to their employees' routine: taking out the trash.

Some 20,000 Texas state workers, who once had night janitors empty their desk-side waste baskets, now must tote their own trash and recyclables to common bins. City workers in Phoenix are doing the same, as are employees of some colleges and companies.

'One of the reAlly labor-intensive parts of custodial work is walking to people's desks and emptying the trash,' said Dana Williams, director of facilities services at the Texas Facilities Commission, which manages buildings for more than 100 state agencies. 'And most people only have a fist-sized amount of trash.' By having workers dump their own cans, Texas is expected to save at least $825,000 annually on labor costs -- a tiny piece of a the state's two-year budget of $182 billion.

In addition to the savings on custodial labor, employers expect to save money by reducing the trash they generate, as well as collect more money by producing greater amounts of recycling, one of the program's goals.

State workers in Texas, for example, received small trash bins in addition to larger recycling cans.

Some University of Washington workers began emptying their own baskets in a similar program a decade ago as part of an environmental initiative. But with budgets cut 25% over the past two years, Gene Woodard, the school's director of building services, is expanding the program campus-wide.

Mr. Woodard says workers occasionally call him to complain about stinky trash cans they forgot to empty before a vacation. 'Some of these mistakes you do just once,' he said.

When Dartmouth College unveiled its program this summer, the school presented the move as a part of a broader 'sustainability initiative.' Psychology professor Catherine Cramer says she was already recycling all the items the college is targeting.

'The only real change will be that I am expected to haul it to some central place myself instead of having custodial staff pick it up,' she wrote at the time on a school website. 'The real goals here, however prettily wrapped in sustainability rhetoric, are rather obvious.'

Ms. Cramer questions the economics of transferring work from the school's lowest-paid workers to higher-paid employees.

'While I am certainly not above emptying my own trash,' she said, 'it's less clear to me that it's a good use of my professional time, especially to make the frequent trips necessitated by a tiny bucket.'

Linda Snyder, Dartmouth's vice president of Campus Planning and Facilities, says the 'primary goals' of the initiative are to increase campus recycling and reduce waste. Results from the first month show just that. 'Although the program has produced nominal savings on costs such as trash-can liners, its main goal is to improve recycling and sustainability,' she said.

Texas is spending about $195,000 to set up its program, for small individual bins, larger centralized bins, signs and brochures. Officials said the preliminary results have been promising: A 13% increase in the collection of recyclable materials -- worth $35,000 a year if that pace continues. Diverting the materials from the trash should save $45,000 more a year.爲了節約開支，美國各地的辦公場所都在給僱員分派一項新任務：自己的垃圾自己倒。

得克薩斯州州政府的大約兩萬名工作人員現在必須把自己的垃圾和可回收物品放入公共垃圾桶，而過去他們辦公桌旁的垃圾桶都是由保潔人員負責清理的。鳳凰城的政府工作人員，以及一些大學和公司的員工也都在這麼做。

德州政府機構設施管理委員會(Texas Facilities Commission)服務部主任威廉姆斯(Dana Williams)表示，保潔工作最累人的一項任務就是走到人們的辦公桌旁清理垃圾桶。而且，大多數人都只有一丁點兒的垃圾。該委員會負責管理100多家德州政府機關的大樓。通過讓員工自己倒垃圾，德州預計每年將至少節省人力成本82.5萬美元──跟該州兩年1,820億美元的預算比當然只是微不足道的一部分。

除了省去保潔員的費用，僱主們還希望通過減少垃圾來節約開支，並且通過更多地回收物品來增加收入，這也是該項目的目標之一。

比如，德州的州政府工作人員除了領到小號的垃圾桶之外，還有比原先更大個兒的可回收物垃圾箱。

華盛頓大學(University of Washington)的一些員工早在十年前就開始了一項類似的行動：倒掉自己的垃圾桶，這是一個環保倡議項目的內容之一。但是，由於過去兩年來學校的預算被削減了四分之一，該校樓宇服務部門的負責人伍達德(Gene Woodard)正在將這個項目在全校推廣。

伍達德說，有時候會有員工給他打電話，抱怨由於放假前忘記倒掉自己的垃圾桶而弄得臭氣熏天的狀況。他的回答是，這種錯誤你只可能犯一次。

今年夏天達特茅斯學院(Dartmouth College)推廣這一項目時，是將它作爲更廣範圍的“可持續發展倡議”的一部分。心理學教授克萊默(Catherine Cramer)說，她早就已經開始回收如今學院指定的所有物品。

當時她在學院網站上這樣寫道，唯一的真正變化是由我自己來把垃圾拖到垃圾收集點，而不是由保潔員來收拾。儘管包裹着‘可持續’的華麗辭藻，這麼做的真正目的卻再明顯不過了。

對於將清潔垃圾的工作從學校低收入工作者轉移到高收入員工身上是否有經濟意義，克萊默提出了質疑。

她說，我當然不是不屑於倒自己的垃圾，但我沒法確定這是對我的工作時間的一種很好的利用，特別是爲了一個小垃圾桶而來回奔走。

達特茅斯學院負責校園規劃和設施管理的副院長斯奈德(Linda Snyder)說，這一倡議的首要目標是增加校園物品的回收利用和減少浪費。第一個月的結果正說明了這一點。她說，雖然這個項目在名義上節約了垃圾袋等成本，但它的主要目標是提高廢物回收率和促進可持續發展。

德州花費了19.5萬美元來實施這一項目，包括購置小型個人垃圾桶口大個兒的公共垃圾箱口標識牌和宣傳小冊子。官員們表示，項目的初步效果令人滿意：可回收物品的數量增加了13%──如果這一增長速度能夠保持，那麼每年將創收3.5萬美元，而將可回收物和垃圾分開的做法每年則可以再節約4.5萬多美元。