Webcor Promotes Waste Reduction through Textile Collection Donation

Webcor Builders’ Northern and Southern California employees recently completed participation in a two-week Zero Waste Textile Collection Donation to help eliminate the impact on landfill. Their 2016 results greatly surpassed the goal, totaling in at 2,552 pounds across five project sites and offices. Webcor typically focuses on waste during construction and demolition, with diversion rates typically greater than 90% of all waste from our construction sites.  However, this year we wanted to impact another facet of waste not always emphasized with general contractors: Personal clothing and textile waste at home.

“We are so excited our collection exceed 1.25 tons of clothing and was able to bring teams and communities together in achieving a common goal.  Webcor is committed to promoting a new way of life that does not deplete the earth’s resources or spoil the natural environment, and through corporate events like this we are able to prove we can make a positive environmental impact away from the construction site”, says Webcor Senior Sustainability Manager, Jenelle Shapiro.  

Last year, Webcor won the 2015 award for most pounds collected overall from the San Francisco Department of Environment and Business Council on Climate Change (BC3) organized program. This accomplishment confirmed the companies corporate sustainability mission through their comprehensive focus on community efforts, and this year we were determined to make an even bigger splash for the 2016 challenge.

For this year’s event the company participated independently of the city organizations, but partnered again with Goodwill who setup collection bins at Webcor's San Francisco and Los Angeles offices and project sites. Did you know that 4,500 pounds of textiles are sent to landfill every hour in San Francisco alone, and on average, each American sends an astonishing 70 pounds of textiles to the dump every year?  Therefore, surpassing the previous years’ total collection of 1,400 pounds was an important goal to Webcor and the goal paid off as they nearly doubled the total weight diverted.

"We are so thrilled with our partnership with Webcor!  With partnerships like these our ability to dramatically increase the positive effects on the environment and keep thousands of pounds of materials out of landfill is a model for other companies to emulate.  We are so fortunate to share our values of people, planet and performance with Webcor”, says SF Goodwill CEO, Maureen Sedonaen.

Webcor involvement in community campaigns like these offer the company diverse avenues to contribute to San Francisco City 0 50 100 Roots Climate Action – a campaign which outlines goals for clean transportation, renewable energy and the need to produce zero waste by 2025 in order to reach city greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.  The company looks forward to partnering with other organizations and affiliations across Northern and Southern California to help impact our future sustainability goals.