Crushed After Christmas: What Holiday Trash Reveals About Year-Round Waste Strategy

By Harrison Crum

Holiday trash hits communities hard. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the amount of household trash spikes by about 25%, with each one adding about 1,000 extra pounds to landfills. This includes $15.2 billion in unwanted gifts, 4% of which are just tossed.

Multifamily can’t avoid its portion of the 5 million metric tons of holiday trash. This can reveal serious problems in a community’s onsite waste support system, as residents face overflowing bins and disposal issues that can lead to complaints. These problems occur year-round, but they are significantly exacerbated during the holidays.

This period gives owners and property managers insight into where the strengths and weaknesses lie in their onsite systems. Adjusting trash strategies prepares them for the next holiday rush, but more importantly, it improves the systems for the other 47 weeks of the year.

When Systems Break

Waste collection systems face their heaviest strain during the holidays, and an inefficient onsite waste support system can exacerbate the situation. This can create a ripple effect, leaving communities with overflowing bins and a host of other problems, such as unpleasant odors and pest infestations.

A community will soon find itself with unhappy residents who may express their frustration through negative reviews and pictures of messy trash areas. This harms a leasing team’s ability to attract prospects and may require increased marketing. Even worse, this can lead to decreased resident retention, adding turnover costs to the financial strains caused by trying to stay ahead of the trash problems and by the reduction in leads.

From a Seasonal Problem to a Year-Round Strategy

Owners and operators should view the holiday trash surge as a valuable diagnostic tool rather than a seasonal problem. These issues are not a one-off, but persistent year-round issues that are made even worse during periods of increased trash. Waste leveling, valet service and much more can be implemented to ensure that communities have an efficient and well-received system from January 1 to December 31.

However, for any of these onsite waste support systems to be truly effective, one of the most valuable components is resident education, including proper disposal and recycling methods. This also requires year-round attention due to resident turnover. Failing to continuously educate residents will ultimately lead to a breakdown in the system.

Holiday waste in a mirror into the overall onsite support system, showing where improvements need to be made to ensure year-round success. Waste management will always have some challenges for communities, but accessing data from holiday performance will lead to a stronger overall system. The improvements made create a reduction in expenses and a boost to reputation, retention and net operating income.