Operating with Integrity: Material Handlers at Heritage

At Heritage Environmental Services, we rely on our core values to help us work towards our mission of protecting human health and the environment. These values guide the work we do each day, to ensure that we’re always doing right by our customers, the Heritage family, our community, and the environment.

Today, we’re excited to explore one of these values, Integrity Matters. To illustrate this value, we connected with two members of the Heritage family to understand how they bring this value to life through their day-to-day activities. Both currently working as Material Handlers, Mari Ganaway and Diana Logan support Heritage by loading, unloading, processing, and storing hazardous and nonhazardous waste materials at Heritage’s permitted waste treatment facilities.

Their contributions expand far beyond this description though, as their environments allow them to explore areas of interest and partner with different Heritage teams based on the task at hand. “At Heritage, there is never a dull moment. At some jobs, there are days that you’re standing around with nothing to do. But here, the days fly by and you’re always learning new stuff. I’ve never had a job like the one I have here.” Mari Ganaway said.

For Mari, opportunities to try new things often leads to partnering with other Heritage team members to get the job done. This is where integrity comes in, he said. “Integrity means working with one another and respecting one another. Everyone you work with is different. We work with people from all over the world, but their goal and our goal is the same,” Mari said. “Even if they’re not in your department or if they’re new, integrity means treating everybody the same, and as you’d like to be treated. We are a family and we’re all in this together.”

For Diana, Integrity Matters is demonstrated through our Stop Work Authority, or the right for any employee to stop work if they perceive that the task cannot be completed safely. Diana said, “I’ve worked at a lot of places that have had massive safety quota commitments to their people, but then when it comes down to it, getting the job done is more important. That’s just not an issue here. When they say that they prioritize safety, they really do.”

For Heritage Material Handlers, working with integrity also means protecting the environment by ensuring that customer waste is properly consolidated for recycling or other sustainable practices. Diana said, “A lot of who I’m working with are larger companies, like grocery chains. Being able to get this stuff and get it recycled and out as much as possible is important. We can’t get every bit from the earth but getting the most that we can is critical.”

Mari elaborated on the integrity he’s seen across other sustainable practices at Heritage: “When I started I didn’t know this, but by exploring different departments I learned that the materials we process are able to be treated and filtered so that they can go back to city treatment centers to be reclaimed. To know that I’m helping to prevent that from being wasted, it makes a huge difference.”

By working together towards a larger mission, Material Handlers like Mari and Diana play a critical role in the operations at Heritage facilities. Integrity serves as a solid foundation for completing the job safely and compliantly when partnering across multiple working areas – and for building relationships along the way. “It all comes back to teamwork,” Mari said. “In my department, we rely on people to provide us with empty tankers. If our tanks are full, we can’t process. Teamwork makes the dream work – literally. Everyone contributes and works together to make room to keep the ball rolling. Everybody relies on everybody and treats everyone the way they would want to be treated. If we can do that, we can get the job done.”

At the end of the day, Integrity Matters plays a key role in building the team-based culture that defines Heritage. “We all have to keep in mind that we are a family, we can’t skip over one department,” Mari said. “We all rely on each other.”

If you’d like to learn more about life at Heritage, visit our Careers Page to further explore our values and the benefits available to the Heritage family.