Page 249 - Solid Waste Analysis and Minimization a Systems Approach

DATA COLLECTION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 227

a separate sheet. The main points emphasized from the feedback and integrated
into the finalized survey were

■ Added more space for respondents to enter information.
■ Added an additional comments section.
■ Several respondents noted that for large corporations, difficulty might arise in deter-
mining annual sales and profits.
■ Several respondents noted confidentially issues might reduce the sales and waste
disposal costs information from being released by respondents.

Before mailing, the survey was also reviewed by Mr. James Walters, manager of
the Lucas County Solid Waste District. Mr. Walters is one of the top solid waste
management leaders in the United States. He spent over 20 years in the automobile-
manufacturing industry in the field of waste management. Mr. Walters suggested
several value-added changes to the survey and gave it his approval as a useful and
effective tool to collect information.

14.3.5 DISTRIBUTION

As discussed in the sampling methodology section, an ordered list and a random num-
ber generator were used to select companies that would receive a survey. An ordered
list of companies in each business group was compiled and a random number genera-
tor (Microsoft Excel) was applied to select the required companies for each SIC code
business grouping.
Each selected company was contacted by phone, fax, or e-mail to determine if they
were willing to participate in the survey. This method was used to increase the
response rate. Surveys were also sent to the researcher’s industrial contacts to increase
response rate. The companies willing to participate were asked their contact informa-
tion and mailed the survey. Companies declining to participate were deleted from the
ordered list and the random number generator was rerun to achieve the required sam-
ple size for each business group. These companies were contacted by phone, fax, or
e-mail and asked if they were willing to participate in the survey. This process was
iterated until all 1500 surveys were mailed proportionality to each SIC code group.

14.4 Data Collection Results

and Discussion

Over 4100 businesspersons were contacted via phone, fax, or e-mail to participate in the
survey. Most were contacted by phone (75 percent), followed by e-mail (20 percent) and
fax (5 percent). Of that total, approximately 35 percent agreed to participate in the survey
and 65 percent declined or did not return phone calls or e-mails. A total of 1500 surveys
were mailed to companies and 438 were returned properly completed, from 65 of the