Waste Audit & Recycling Analysis

Waste Audit & Recycling Analysis

A waste audit establishes what is actually in the stream. Klean Consulting delivers audits and recycling analysis for industrial sites, commercial operators, institutions and municipalities, producing data robust enough to support procurement, permitting and capital decisions.

Physical Characterisation

We sample and sort to defined categories, with sample sizes and timing chosen to capture seasonal and operational variation rather than one convenient week. Results are reported by weight and volume, by category and sub-category, and by generating point where the client needs to target interventions. Contamination is quantified, not noted.

Reconciliation Against Records

Characterisation results are reconciled against weighbridge data, haulier invoices, container schedules and production records. This step routinely surfaces the discrepancies that matter — containers collected part-full, materials cross-contaminated before they reach the bin, tonnages billed that do not match tonnages moved. Clients often recover the audit fee here alone.

Diversion Potential and Material Valuation

For each recoverable fraction we assess technical recoverability, the local market and gate fee or revenue, the handling and storage required, and the net effect on disposal cost. The output is a ranked set of opportunities with realistic capture rates rather than a theoretical maximum diversion figure that no operation has ever achieved.

Energy and Resource Audits

Where a site's energy and material flows are linked, we extend the scope to cover both. Klean Industries provides energy and waste audits as a formal service, and our consulting engagements draw on that capability directly.

Why the Audit Comes First

Plant sizing, offtake specification, diversion targets, tariff models and contract performance regimes all inherit the audit's numbers. Size a facility on estimated composition and the operator carries a composition risk it never priced. Write a diversion obligation without a characterised baseline and neither party can prove performance. The audit is cheap; the consequences of skipping it are not.

What You Receive

The full sorting dataset, the reconciliation workings, a composition and diversion analysis, ranked recommendations with indicative costs, and a repeat-audit protocol so the client can track change over time on a consistent basis.

Audit Types

Scope varies with purpose. A compliance audit tests reported figures against observed practice. A cost-reduction audit focuses on container sizing, collection frequency and misdirected materials. A procurement audit builds the composition evidence a tender will be priced against. A feedstock audit characterises material for a proposed treatment or recovery facility, where composition tolerance determines whether the plant works.