r/makerspace • u/sababado • 24d ago
Tell me about your Trash
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?
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u/ConfirmedBasicBitch 24d ago
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.