Nowadays, businesses have a more complex relationship with their waste than ever before and that is mostly a good thing.
After all, it wasn’t too long ago that businesses could do with their waste as they liked, which meant much more environmental pollution and destruction.
As an eco-friendly business owner, you want to know the best ways to stay compliant with the tangle of legal requirements as well as to meet your and your customers’ demands for safe business waste disposal.
To that end, let’s look at the different ways you can recycle, safely contain, and dispose of waste in the business.
Know Your Waste
To make sure you’re taking the best possible steps to make your business more careful about its waste and more sustainable in general, you have to be able to identify the problem, to begin with.
A waste management strategy is crucial, and it begins, first of all, with the audit. Qualified consultants with industry experience can help you delve into every aspect of the business and every corner of your site and premises.
From there, they can help you identify the most wasteful areas, the resources that you’re using most of, and how to reduce that waste.
From there, you can work with consultants on a constantly evolving waste management policy to stop waste right at the source rather than figuring out what you have to do with it afterwards.
Many of these consultants will also include updates on new legal compliance levels, legislation and regulations. After all, becoming eco-friendly isn’t just a matter of principle, it’s a matter of law.
That approach of auditing, measuring, and effecting change can be taken further than just your waste, as well.
Consider taking the same step for energy and water usage throughout the business to become more and more sustainable.
The Three Rs – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
The simple mantra that has been used by government bodies and environmental thinktanks has become a valuable cornerstone when it comes to strategies by which we make our businesses more sustainable.
To reduce waste in your business, for instance, think about which resources you can stop using entirely, or at least drastically reduce the use of.
Paper is a common target of waste reduction strategies. Moving to more use of digital storage options and starting an internal policy of only printing what is absolutely necessary for the business can drastically cut down not just the costs of paper use, but the storage space and the cabinets you have to pay for to keep hold of all that paper.
There are a lot of little ways to reuse more assets in the business, as well. For instance, when cleaning the office, try and avoid using wasteful items like tissue paper and disposable wipes.
Instead, keep washable, reusable sponges, cloths, and microfiber cleaning mitts that you can use hundreds if not thousands of times.
Instead of plastic cups, make sure everyone in the office has a cup or mug. Reusable printing cartridges can drastically reduce printing costs if your paperless approach hasn’t already eliminated it.
Recycling is where you might get your most mileage, however. Construct a firm internal policy on which materials are recyclable and make sure you have recycling stations dotted throughout the business premises, not just in one spot.
The best way to go green at work is to ensure partnership with a recycled waste disposal team, however.
How to Dispose of Your Waste Safely
We produce a lot more recyclable waste than you might think. The fact is that we simply don’t find the opportunity to recycle it because it’s not collected as regularly as it should be.
For that reason, it’s worth partnering up with a waste recycling company. We recycle many more types of materials than standard waste pickups, including bricks, wood, different types of paper and cardboard, green waste, soil, metal, various plastics, and much more.
What’s more, with the help of a waste recycling company, you don’t have to worry about sorting out all your recycling yourself.
Different recycling stations can make it easier to separate different recycled goods on a smaller basis, but when you’re getting rid of large quantities of waste, hiring specialist skips can help you avoid wasting time having to manage several smaller specialized waste bins.
Working to dispose of your waste and to recycle what’s recyclable is good for more than just the environment. It’s good for the business, too.
Customers are voting with their wallets nowadays and those votes show much more support for those businesses that take their corporate social responsibility a lot more seriously.
Your recycling and waste disposal efforts are just one part of that, but they’re a very big part.