Written by Ian Smith October 7, 2026
MyMatR was speaking with a prospective client about advanced waste identification and sorting when the conversation took a familiar turn. One participant suggested another organization might fund the project. The next explained that it would not really be that organization's money either. By the end, several people liked the idea, but no one at the table had taken ownership of paying for it or operating it.
That exchange was not about bad intentions. It was about other people's money, or OPM, and a problem that quietly stalls a lot of waste innovation.
Nearly every employee spends organizational money rather than personal money. That is normal. The useful distinction is whether a problem has an accountable owner, or whether everyone supports solving it only if another department, sponsor, landlord, municipality, grant maker, or partner pays.
Interest is cheap. A budget commitment is evidence that a problem has survived contact with priorities, tradeoffs, implementation risk, and opportunity cost.
The committee can know everything and own nothing
Waste projects are naturally cross functional. Sustainability may want diversion data and credible reporting. Facilities wants dependable collection and no new downtime. Janitorial teams need a process that is clear, safe, and maintainable. Finance and procurement need a defensible business case and a clear owner for costs. The hauler and processor care about material quality, route efficiency, and what the downstream system will accept.
Then there are the people making disposal decisions: employees, students, fans, visitors, and tenants. They usually do not directly bear the contamination, labor, or hauling cost created by a wrong choice at the bin.
A committee can distribute expertise, but it can also distribute accountability until no one owns the outcome. Economists call one version of this a principal agent problem: the person making a decision may not bear the full cost or receive the full benefit. Waste systems add split incentives, where budgets, authority, work, and benefits sit in different places. Each group can behave rationally while the organization makes no decision.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's commercial buildings guidance reflects this reality. It recommends management support, defined responsibilities, measurable goals, waste assessments, and tracking. Better waste performance is a management system, not simply a gadget purchase.
Without ownership, a promising project drifts into pilot purgatory: another grant application, another round of consensus building, or a polished demonstration that no operating budget sustains.
Outside funding is a launchpad, not an owner
Grants, sponsorships, and shared funding can accelerate legitimate projects. The warning sign is not outside money itself. It is a proposal with no internal owner, contribution, operating plan, or commitment after the outside funding ends.
Other people's money can launch a project. It cannot supply ownership after the ribbon cutting.
A practical test is straightforward:
1. Name one executive sponsor and one day to day operating owner.
2. Identify who pays for the pilot, who pays for ongoing operation, and what happens when outside funding ends.
3. Agree on the problem before selecting technology: contamination, hauling cost, reporting gaps, labor, safety, education, or another defined outcome.
4. Establish a baseline and a few measures that matter to finance, operations, and sustainability.
5. Include frontline staff, the hauler, and the downstream processor before the workflow is locked in.
6. Give the pilot a decision: scale, revise, or stop.
Even when a sponsor funds equipment, staff time, training, maintenance, data review, and a post pilot budget show that the organization values the outcome.
This matters in MyMatR's corner of the waste world. Advanced waste identification, source side recycling education, deposit level waste data, and automatic sorting only work when operations, sustainability, finance, and the people expected to act on the information agree on the goal. Coach can provide two stream education and waste visibility without mechanical sorting. Maestro can add automatic rotation that directs a deposit into one of two customer configured trash or recycling streams. Neither technology can decide which department owns the result or who responds to the data.
If a problem matters only when someone else pays for it, the organization may like the idea more than it values the outcome. The strongest waste programs align the people who want the result with the people who control the budget and the people who operate the system.
That wraps up this week's Waste Watch Wednesday. Better sorting starts at the bin, but durable improvement starts with ownership.
Sources
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Managing and Reducing Wastes: A Guide for Commercial Buildings
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Sustainable Materials Management Basics
- Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling, Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure, Journal of Financial Economics 3 (1976), 305–360