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Zero-Waste City Targets and the Commercial Waste Gap: Where Unsold Beverages Fit
12 Nov 2026
Whether your city already has a zero-waste target on paper or is still working on one, the household bin is usually where the plan begins. That makes sense, since residents are easy to reach and a city can change a collection schedule without asking anyone’s permission. The problem is that homes are often the smaller piece. In Austin, residential waste makes up less than 15% of the total, which is why the city’s goal of reaching zero waste by 2040 leans so heavily on business participation.
Strong residential programs are a good start, but they only address part of the waste stream. The harder question for planners is what happens to the commercial share.
Why commercial waste is so hard to see
Boston is a good example. Its first zero-waste plan set an 80% recycling target for 2035 and 90% for 2050, and about 78% of the city’s waste stream comes from the commercial sector, construction and demolition included. That means the target can’t be reached by improving residential programs alone.
The difficulty comes down to how commercial waste is arranged. A business hires a private hauler under a private contract, and the city may never find out what was in the container or where it ended up. Even when a rule exists, there may be no data to check it against. This matters because a number only means something if you can measure what it counts. Lists of the cleanest cities in the world often point to diversion rates like 85% in Adelaide, and a figure like that depends on a city knowing what is going into its bins.
Cities have taken different approaches to getting that visibility. Austin went with a mandate and phased in an ordinance requiring commercial properties to provide recycling service. Philadelphia has also used voluntary initiatives, such as its Zero Waste Partnership, to encourage businesses to report waste diversion and share best practices. More recently, the city launched a centralized Commercial Waste and Recycling Portal in December 2025 to simplify mandatory reporting and improve the collection of commercial waste data. A mandate can bring scale, while a voluntary program tends to bring data and goodwill. Neither one, as far as we can tell, has a clear answer for the odd streams that don’t fit standard recycling categories.
The stream that fits no category
Commercial waste reporting usually sorts material into cardboard, paper, food scraps, metals, construction debris and general trash. Now think about a distributor with six pallets of energy drinks that passed their best-by date, or a retailer sending back a seasonal flavor that never sold. Damaged stock works the same way.
In most cases that product has no obvious place on the reporting form. A facilities manager calls the hauler, the pallets get picked up, and the city’s data records a few tons of general trash. Sometimes staff will pour the contents out first, which adds a wastewater problem to the waste problem.
There’s also a measurement issue that doesn’t get much attention. A standard 12-ounce can holds about 355 grams of liquid and the aluminum shell weighs roughly 13 grams, so a full can is around 96% drink by weight. That means that when a load of unsold beverages is counted in tons, very little of that tonnage is the valuable material. A weight-based target treats a ton of sealed cans the same as a ton of anything else, even though the aluminum is among the most recoverable materials in the waste stream. A city that only tracks tons may miss this entirely.
Why the usual recycling channels can’t take it
You might assume a full can goes straight into a recycling bin, but in practice it can’t. Curbside systems and the sorting facilities behind them are designed for empty, dry containers. A can full of liquid may leak onto paper, burst during compaction and slow down the sorting line. Alcoholic products also come with excise tax rules and destruction paperwork.
That’s why a specialized route is needed. A processor typically depackages the product, which separates the liquid from the packaging. The metal goes to the scrap market and the liquid is treated or reclaimed. For alcoholic beverages, ethanol recovery may also be an option.
The business then receives documentation showing where everything went, which helps with audits and brand protection. This is what recycling unsaleable beverage cans looks like when it’s handled properly, and it gives a commercial diversion program something concrete to point to.
What the national can numbers tell us
According to reporting on Aluminum Association and Can Manufacturers Institute data, US consumers recycled 43% of their cans in 2023. About 61 billion cans were thrown away, worth roughly $1.2 billion. The same data shows a closed-loop rate of 97%. This figure covers the share of recycled aluminum can material that goes back into making new beverage containers, so it measures what happens after recycling rather than how many cans get recycled in the first place. So metal that reaches the right stream usually comes back as a can, and that fits the circular economy thinking more cities are adopting.
The same industry reporting highlights the impact of deposit-return policies. Citing state-level recycling data, the Aluminum Association notes that states with deposit-return systems average an aluminum can recycling rate of approximately 68%, compared with 22% in states without such programs. That’s a good argument for deposits, but there’s a gap here too. A deposit system relies on a shopper returning an empty can. Product that expires in a warehouse never reaches a shopper, so the refund never applies to it. What happens to the metal in that stock depends on the city’s commercial waste policy and on the business’s own decisions.
What a city can actually do
Some improvements may be possible within existing reporting and program frameworks, depending on local authority, so closing this gap doesn’t always call for new legislation. Even so, a few adjustments can go a long way.
The simplest option is adding a line for unsaleable packaged goods to commercial waste reporting, so the material gets named instead of ending up under general trash. Even a small change like this can show planners how big the stream is, though what it takes to put in place will vary from city to city.
Voluntary programs like Philadelphia’s could also accept certified processor documentation as proof of diversion. That gives businesses with expired stock a reason to choose a legitimate recovery route, and in return the city gets cleaner numbers.
It’s also worth taking a second look at reporting units. If a target is only weight-based, a city can add a measure of the material recovered, such as pounds of aluminum, so that a pallet of cans isn’t judged by its water content.
Hauler licensing is another lever. Cities that permit commercial haulers can ask them to say where loads of mostly packaged product end up, which would help with the visibility problem Boston has been dealing with. Technology can also help with better data collection, and cities such as Los Angeles are looking at smart technology to improve how waste is collected.
Venues that a city or other public body owns or operates, such as convention centers or airports, often handle large volumes of beverages, which makes them good pilots. Setting a standard for leftover stock there lets the city lead by example before asking anyone else to follow.
Final Thoughts
Unsold beverages won’t make or break a city’s diversion rate. Still, the stream is easy to identify, and it’s missing from most current data. Specialist beverage destruction providers already have proven ways to recover the metal and handle the liquid. For a planner looking at a commercial diversion rate that won’t budge, that’s a useful place to start.
So ask yourself, does your city’s commercial reporting have a place for unsold beverages? If not, what would it take to add one?
