Group Lead, Ved Krishna
Shaun Miller is the Senior Director of Operations and Sustainability for Envita Solutions. Envita is a fourth generation family owned business that helps companies build a strategy around waste. In North America today Envita Solutions has approximately 4,000 customer facilities. Of those customer f
0:00 – Introduction to Beta Solutions and Holistic Waste Management
Shaun Miller, senior director of operations and sustainability at Beta Solutions, explains the company’s approach: rather than optimising a single waste stream, they look at the full picture of industrial waste and find the best diversion pathway for each material.
8:00 – From Finance and Carbon Credits to Waste Management
Sean’s path to sustainability consulting ran through finance, carbon credit markets, and an MBA at the Heritage Group. He explains how that mix of commercial and environmental thinking shapes how Beta Solutions makes the case for waste diversion to clients whose primary metric is cost.
16:00 – Real-Time Sustainability Dashboards and Data-Driven Diversion
Beta Solutions gives clients real-time visibility into their waste streams through dashboards that can be drilled into at multiple levels of detail. Sean explains how making waste data visible drives behaviour change and helps sustainability teams build the internal business case for improvement.
24:00 – Industrial Waste Streams: From Filter Cakes to Metal Sludges
Beta Solutions manages highly complex industrial waste streams, including manufacturing filter cakes, metal sludges, and chemical byproducts. Sean explains how circular solutions are found for streams that most waste managers would simply landfill.
32:00 – When Landfill Is Still the Cheapest Option — And What to Do About It
Landfill real estate is cheap in much of the US, which means economic incentives alone don’t drive diversion. Sean explains how Beta Solutions helps clients make the case for investing in waste reduction despite the apparent cost advantage of just throwing things away.
40:00 – Waste Mapping and On-Site Audits
Before recommending solutions, Beta Solutions walks through a client’s entire facility with a waste map. Sean explains how this systematic audit consistently reveals opportunities that nobody had noticed, even in facilities that already think of themselves as sustainability-focused.
48:00 – The Role of Compostable Packaging in Industrial Waste Programs
Compostable packaging creates both opportunities and complications in industrial waste programmes, especially when it enters mixed streams that composters can’t reliably accept. Sean explains how Beta Solutions navigates this and what it suggests about packaging design.
56:00 – Building a Like-Minded Sustainability Ecosystem
The most effective waste diversion happens across a whole supply chain ecosystem, not just within one facility. Sean explains why collaboration rather than internal optimisation is the key to achieving genuinely closed-loop outcomes.
Let’s come together!
