倒垃圾事小 节约成本是关键

To save money, offices around the U.S. are adding a new chore to their employees' routine: taking out the trash.

Some 20,000 Texas state workers, who once had night janitors empty their desk-side waste baskets, now must tote their own trash and recyclables to common bins. City workers in Phoenix are doing the same, as are employees of some colleges and companies.

'One of the really labor-intensive parts of custodial work is walking to people's desks and emptying the trash,' said Dana Williams, director of facilities services at the Texas Facilities Commission, which manages buildings for more than 100 state agencies. 'And most people only have a fist-sized amount of trash.' By having workers dump their own cans, Texas is expected to save at least $825,000 annually on labor costs -- a tiny piece of a the state's two-year budget of $182 billion.

In addition to the savings on custodial labor, employers expect to save money by reducing the trash they generate, as well as collect more money by producing greater amounts of recycling, one of the program's goals.

State workers in Texas, for example, received small trash bins in addition to larger recycling cans.

Some University of Washington workers began emptying their own baskets in a similar program a decade ago as part of an environmental initiative. But with budgets cut 25% over the past two years, Gene Woodard, the school's director of building services, is expanding the program campus-wide.

Mr. Woodard says workers occasionally call him to complain about stinky trash cans they forgot to empty before a vacation. 'Some of these mistakes you do just once,' he said.

When Dartmouth College unveiled its program this summer, the school presented the move as a part of a broader 'sustainability initiative.' Psychology professor Catherine Cramer says she was already recycling all the items the college is targeting.

'The only real change will be that I am expected to haul it to some central place myself instead of having custodial staff pick it up,' she wrote at the time on a school website. 'The real goals here, however prettily wrapped in sustainability rhetoric, are rather obvious.'

Ms. Cramer questions the economics of transferring work from the school's lowest-paid workers to higher-paid employees.

'While I am certainly not above emptying my own trash,' she said, 'it's less clear to me that it's a good use of my professional time, especially to make the frequent trips necessitated by a tiny bucket.'

Linda Snyder, Dartmouth's vice president of Campus Planning and Facilities, says the 'primary goals' of the initiative are to increase campus recycling and reduce waste. Results from the first month show just that. 'Although the program has produced nominal savings on costs such as trash-can liners, its main goal is to improve recycling and sustainability,' she said.

Texas is spending about $195,000 to set up its program, for small individual bins, larger centralized bins, signs and brochures. Officials said the preliminary results have been promising: A 13% increase in the collection of recyclable materials -- worth $35,000 a year if that pace continues. Diverting the materials from the trash should save $45,000 more a year.为了节约开支，美国各地的办公场所都在给雇员分派一项新任务：自己的垃圾自己倒。

得克萨斯州州政府的大约两万名工作人员现在必须把自己的垃圾和可回收物品放入公共垃圾桶，而过去他们办公桌旁的垃圾桶都是由保洁人员负责清理的。凤凰城的政府工作人员，以及一些大学和公司的员工也都在这么做。

德州政府机构设施管理委员会(Texas Facilities Commission)服务部主任威廉姆斯(Dana Williams)表示，保洁工作最累人的一项任务就是走到人们的办公桌旁清理垃圾桶。而且，大多数人都只有一丁点儿的垃圾。该委员会负责管理100多家德州政府机关的大楼。通过让员工自己倒垃圾，德州预计每年将至少节省人力成本82.5万美元──跟该州两年1,820亿美元的预算比当然只是微不足道的一部分。

除了省去保洁员的费用，雇主们还希望通过减少垃圾来节约开支，并且通过更多地回收物品来增加收入，这也是该项目的目标之一。

比如，德州的州政府工作人员除了领到小号的垃圾桶之外，还有比原先更大个儿的可回收物垃圾箱。

华盛顿大学(University of Washington)的一些员工早在十年前就开始了一项类似的行动：倒掉自己的垃圾桶，这是一个环保倡议项目的内容之一。但是，由于过去两年来学校的预算被削减了四分之一，该校楼宇服务部门的负责人伍达德(Gene Woodard)正在将这个项目在全校推广。

伍达德说，有时候会有员工给他打电话，抱怨由于放假前忘记倒掉自己的垃圾桶而弄得臭气熏天的状况。他的回答是，这种错误你只可能犯一次。

今年夏天达特茅斯学院(Dartmouth College)推广这一项目时，是将它作为更广范围的“可持续发展倡议”的一部分。心理学教授克莱默(Catherine Cramer)说，她早就已经开始回收如今学院指定的所有物品。

当时她在学院网站上这样写道，唯一的真正变化是由我自己来把垃圾拖到垃圾收集点，而不是由保洁员来收拾。尽管包裹着‘可持续’的华丽辞藻，这么做的真正目的却再明显不过了。

对于将清洁垃圾的工作从学校低收入工作者转移到高收入员工身上是否有经济意义，克莱默提出了质疑。

她说，我当然不是不屑于倒自己的垃圾，但我没法确定这是对我的工作时间的一种很好的利用，特别是为了一个小垃圾桶而来回奔走。

达特茅斯学院负责校园规划和设施管理的副院长斯奈德(Linda Snyder)说，这一倡议的首要目标是增加校园物品的回收利用和减少浪费。第一个月的结果正说明了这一点。她说，虽然这个项目在名义上节约了垃圾袋等成本，但它的主要目标是提高废物回收率和促进可持续发展。

德州花费了19.5万美元来实施这一项目，包括购置小型个人垃圾桶口大个儿的公共垃圾箱口标识牌和宣传小册子。官员们表示，项目的初步效果令人满意：可回收物品的数量增加了13%──如果这一增长速度能够保持，那么每年将创收3.5万美元，而将可回收物和垃圾分开的做法每年则可以再节约4.5万多美元。