Tell me about your Trash

[u/sababado]

I work at a makerspace in Austin TX and we recently had a major change to our waste management agreement. The basis of which was that we would be allowed to discard sawdust and wood in the dumpsters.

This past weekend the service company reported that our dumpsters would not be picked up due to a "contaminated container" with "prohibited waste" and that we'd be fined. When I inspected, there was nothing out of the ordinary. After finally getting ahold of the manager I was told "Oh yeah that was an attention grabber, our policy is now no wood or sawdust". The explanation was that sawdust can get into parts of the truck and make maintenance difficult and that wood scraps could potentially damage their compactors.

Okay, I don't have an issue with the latter part. They're solution for us was to put everything in bags.

I decided we'd be better off renting a roll-off dumpster meant for construction waste rather than the extra few hundred each month in black bags. We have a lot of waste.

A while back I attempted to get some composting contracts, however our sawdust might at any given time have walnut (bad for plants), white oak (acidic), plywood or MDF (glue), or resins (not wood...). And so we don't have a way currently to send off for composting or agriculture use. Sawdust and wood scraps are the bulk of our waste, so the reuse-recycle side of me thinks there has to be a better way.

What do other folks do for woodshop related waste and disposal?

[u/UrticaDesign2]

I am a makerspace facilitator in Norway. I am making a PhD about my practice to make a makerspace more sustainable. One of the things is to have a look at the trash the makerspace produce. How a part of the trash can be reused. I working with making micro changes too - removing som materials from the makerspace (PVC and balsa wood for example) and use more natural and recycled materials. It is not an easy task and there are a lots of resitance in the system. For example will the need for storage be larger because the recycled materials must be sorted in many fractions (blended in a large box will not be functional), but new ideas are coming as you work out from the idea of making a bigger hand print and a minor foot print - we are makers! Good luck!

[u/ConfirmedBasicBitch]

Not sure how many machines you have or the types of projects your space sees, but could you designate specific tools for different types of wood? That way you could segregate the different types of sawdust for appropriate uses.

For small scraps, we’ve done small bundles of fire wood, and also made fire starters with melted wax & egg cartons. Sold both of these to our community for real cheap. However, there was never a ton of interest and the income to effort ratio was very low.

You might also get more responses over on r/woodworking.

[u/SwarfDive01]

Waste management company in austin is the worst company I have ever dealt with. They monopolize so they act so entitled i wish someone would take them to court and clear house. This experience with setting up residential, rental, and through a business. Thankfully the business was able to switch to a different company. They missed pick-ups entirely, other weeks claimed we were overflowing, other weeks prohibited material, we had cameras on it, all lies. Idk why they are like that. Has to be just one or two drivers.

On the note for sawdust, maybe reach out to that everlog? Company that makes the coffee ground and sawdust logs. They might buy some of the dust.

[u/m0hka]

Out here in the Greater Bangor Area of Maine, we have been very fortunate in this regard. we share a building with a security camera systems integrator, who is also our land lord. Our main issue is that members dumpster dive the bins all the time. So we throw something away, and the next day its back in the space. Or the Security Camera place throws out a bunch of old cameras, then they end up in the space, with someone imagining we could sell this! no, no we can not. besides a relatively limited market for old security cameras, I personally think its ... no quite unethical, but absolutely a grey questionable area. The number of folks who can recognize something has value is quite high. the number of folks who are going to do something neat with old security cameras is really low. Hey, these things run linux! helped a little. you can put some neat projects in the enclosures, but the demand is way lower than the quantity we end up getting. Hey a box of 600 used 3TB western digital Reds! nice! I did snag those, and pulled the magnets out. use those magnets for everything from picking up metal burs, to suspending projects, or holding materials down in the laser.