Introduction
Industrial waste diversion involves strategies that your company uses to redirect waste materials away from landfills. In manufacturing, electronics, and heavy equipment sectors, waste diversion typically addresses materials like surplus inventory, scrap metal, obsolete electronics, packaging waste, and idle machinery.
The importance of industrial waste diversion is highlighted by the sheer volume of waste generated. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), industrial sectors produce more than 30 times the amount of waste compared to households, resulting in significant landfill usage, environmental impacts, and rising disposal costs for industries.
Moving beyond landfill disposal lowers your waste management expenses, helps you avoid environmental non-compliance penalties, and positions your company as an industry leader in sustainability.
In this blog, you’ll discover seven waste diversion strategies—including both common methods and underutilized approaches—that you can implement to enhance your industrial waste management, achieve sustainability goals, and strengthen your bottom line.
Common Landfill Diversion Strategies
Effective industrial waste management starts by adopting well-known diversion methods that reduce your landfill reliance. These foundational strategies help your operations reclaim value, maintain regulatory compliance, and reduce environmental impact. Here are the common diversion strategies used by industries:
1. Recycling
Recycling is one of the most established and widely adopted landfill diversion strategies in industrial settings. It involves collecting and processing materials into raw materials that can be reintroduced into manufacturing workflows.
In sectors like heavy equipment and electronics, metals—including steel, aluminum, and copper—are commonly reclaimed from scrap or decommissioned equipment. Plastics from packaging, cable insulation, and molded parts are sorted, shredded, and repurposed into usable resins. Even industrial-grade paper and cardboard are diverted into recycling streams, reducing demand for virgin pulp.
2. Reuse
Reuse strategies keep materials and assets in circulation without the need for reprocessing or remanufacturing. In industrial environments, this often takes the form of returnable packaging systems—such as pallets, crates, totes, and drums—that cycle between suppliers and production sites multiple times before retirement.
Beyond packaging, reuse programs also extend to equipment, tooling, and even Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) spare parts. For example, facilities may transfer idle machinery internally or repurpose fixtures and components across production lines. These approaches reduce procurement costs, eliminate unnecessary disposal, and extend the useful life of high-value assets, diverting them from the landfill while maintaining operational efficiency.
3. Energy Recovery
Energy recovery provides a productive outlet for industrial waste streams that cannot be recycled or reused. This diversion strategy channels non-recyclable materials—such as contaminated packaging, residual plastics, or process by-products—into waste-to-energy facilities, where they are incinerated under controlled conditions to generate heat or electricity.
Some manufacturing sites and heavy equipment plants also participate in industrial co-processing, where certain wastes are used as alternative fuels in cement kilns or other high-temperature processes. By converting waste into energy, these practices significantly reduce landfill volume, lower fossil fuel consumption, reduce carbon footprint and provide an environmentally responsible end-of-life solution for otherwise challenging materials.
Underused Diversion Strategies
While common landfill diversion practices form the foundation of sustainable waste management, many high-impact strategies remain overlooked or misclassified. Here are the underused and strategic diversion strategies that contribute significantly to landfill reduction as well as a tool for resource optimization:
1. Asset Recovery & Surplus Resale
Asset recovery transforms idle equipment, tools, and excess inventory from a disposal liability into a value-generating resource. By identifying and removing surplus assets from warehouse, you can resell them through industrial liquidators like Amplio on secondary markets, auction platforms, or through supplier return programs.
This approach unlocks working capital, frees up warehouse space, and significantly diverts industrial material from landfill. When managed systematically, asset recovery programs create a measurable sustainability impact and provide operational agility.
2. Remanufacturing & Refurbishment
Remanufacturing and refurbishment give worn or obsolete components a second life by restoring them to functional, like-new condition. This process is often carried out by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) or certified third-party specialists, who recover, inspect, and upgrade parts or equipment to meet industry standards.
By extending the operational lifecycle of valuable assets, you minimize waste generation and reduce the demand for new raw materials.
3. Parts Harvesting & Component Reuse
Parts harvesting is another undermined diversion strategy that involves salvaging usable components from end-of-life equipment for use as spares or in repair operations. While not every element can be recovered, this strategy ensures that functional parts continue to support your operations and maintenance needs, reducing the volume of waste sent to landfills.
Non-recoverable cores or unusable components can then be directed to appropriate recycling streams. By prioritizing component reuse where possible, you optimize asset value and further lower your waste footprint.
4. Industrial Symbiosis
Industrial symbiosis creates value by redirecting scrap, off-cuts, and by-products either back into broader manufacturing processes by exchanging them with nearby facilities that can use them as raw materials. This collaborative approach keeps materials in productive use and helps both parties reduce landfill disposal and raw material costs.
By building partnerships within your industrial ecosystem, you unlock opportunities to convert what was once considered waste into valuable resources, supporting industrial circularity and measurable waste diversion outcomes.
Amplio: A Key Partner to Your Landfill Diversion Mission
- Network of Pre-Vetted Industrial Buyers and Sellers
Amplio holds access to an established network of industrial buyers and sellers that enables industrial symbiosis—connecting your by-products and surplus materials with other organizations seeking those resources.
- Maximizing Asset Value Recovery
We maximize recovery on your excess inventory through precise appraisals and data-driven sales strategies, using daily secondary market insights.
- Real-Time Diversion Dashboards
We provide dashboard to monitor key metrics for scrap, surplus, and material reuse through live dashboards, supporting data-driven decisions and continuous improvement.
- Expert Support Across the Diversion Lifecycle:
Amplio provides assistance to you in negotiating asset sales and coordinating logistics for maximum waste reduction.
Contact us now to integrate these diversion strategies into your operations and achieve sustainable industrial waste management.
