ESG Reporting for Waste as a Utility
COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE CASE STUDY
A commercial real estate portfolio used WATS to prepare waste data from 30+ sites across the U.S. for their annual reporting. The client needed to report all utilities through their preexisting ESG dashboard but lacked robust waste-data-specific functionality.
WATS empowered the client with tools to ingest, review, and act on their waste data, and allowed them to deliver the data to their required ESG software easily.
WATS became a centralized hub for users to aggregate waste data, track goals, manage waste operations, and discover insights without requiring a consultant to send data to their ESG platform.
125+
Users in WATS
BUSINESS DETAILS
Commercial real estate
30+ sites across the U.S.
Very motivated by sustainability goals
CASE STUDY DETAILS
Needed to track and manage waste without creating an additional burden for ESG reporting.
Previous spreadsheet solutions required consultants to maintain, verify, and visualize the data.
The Challenge
The client has public-facing ESG reporting requirements for energy, water, and waste, all reported through WatchWire, a well-known ESG reporting platform. ESG reporting platforms typically connect seamlessly to metered utilities such as water and energy, but waste is rarely metered, and is therefore challenging to accurately quantify and ingest into software (especially because most ESG platforms are engineered for energy data). The client wanted access to tools built for waste so they could better manage their waste throughout the year, and enter reporting season with high confidence that their waste data was in order.
When the client used spreadsheets for waste tracking and reporting in the past, they depended on consultants to ensure that the data in each system was accurate and aligned with each other. The client wanted to use WATS as a source of truth to avoid that time-consuming review process and have changes in WATS reflected in their reporting data in WatchWire.
The Solution
As a software platform purpose-built for waste data, WATS ingests waste data from any data source and streamlines the process of structuring waste operations into an intuitive platform. Once in WATS, waste data can be easily formatted for export, including into the format required to match WatchWire’s import requirements.
After creating a data export file that aligned with WatchWire’s import needs, WATS sent routine updates to WatchWire in order to keep waste reporting data accurate and inline with WATS, which acts as a centralized source for waste information. The WATS software continued to automatically ingest source files from all of the client’s sites, and the resulting data was made available on WatchWire for reporting.
The Result
Finally having a single source-of-truth for waste data and waste operations management, the client onboarded over 125 users into the software, including the corporate sustainability team, property managers, custodial staff, and building tenants.
These users engaged with the waste data by:
Visualizing client, site, and tenant waste data in the dashboard to track progress on goals
Reviewing and resolving automated data flags to fill in missing data
Training custodial staff on each building’s unique waste procedures using the WATS Waste Management Plan
With this system in place, the client can confidently use WATS for their day-to-day needs and have all the data they need for annual reporting, finally skipping the spreadsheets for their waste data.