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IBC Recycle USA
Blog · January 26, 2023 · 8 min read

EPA WARM Model: How to Use It for IBC Sustainability Reporting

The EPA's Waste Reduction Model (WARM) is the U.S. default for converting waste-diversion tonnage into CO₂-equivalent reporting. It is also widely applicable to IBC tote programs — but the right inputs matter. Here is the practical guide for sustainability teams.

SustainabilityPost #11 of 34

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What WARM is

WARM is a public-domain EPA tool that converts material-management decisions (recycling, landfilling, source reduction) into greenhouse-gas equivalents. It is the math behind a lot of corporate sustainability disclosures.

How to apply it to IBCs

For each reconditioned tank you can document as displacing a virgin-tank purchase, count the HDPE weight (roughly 59 kg per 275-gallon bottle) as "source-reduced HDPE." WARM's factor for source-reduced HDPE runs around 1.45 metric tons CO₂e per metric ton of polymer — meaningfully different from the "recycled HDPE" factor of about 0.85 tonnes CO₂e per tonne.

Common errors

  • Counting both source-reduction (reuse) and recycling for the same tank. Pick one.
  • Counting tanks that did not actually displace a virgin purchase (cycles within the same customer's pool).
  • Using mass-balance assumptions that overstate the polymer share of total IBC weight.

What we provide

For closed-loop program customers, we report monthly tonnage that they can drop directly into a WARM-based sustainability disclosure with the appropriate documentation trail. For one-time buyers, we can produce a per-shipment diversion certificate on request.

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