For a long time, many businesses turned a blind eye to recycling. Instead of seeing it as a way of helping the environment, recycling was judged as an inconvenience, a nagging issue that could be avoided.
Well, that is no longer the case.
Due to the impact of global warming and landfills running out of space, governments across the world have been placing continual pressure on organizations to up their recycling efforts.
However, this shouldn’t be viewed as a burden. In fact, recycling has several benefits, such as:
- Spending less money on waste management
- Improving your reputation with the general public
- Generating revenue by recycling
- Boosting morale among employees
- Reducing your carbon footprint
With these positives – and regulations – in mind, you will be looking for ways to enhance your recycling efforts. For a starter guide, here are five tips to follow to help your business become more eco-friendly.
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Start with a site audit
Before you get stuck into enhancing your recycling campaign, it’s vital you perform a site audit. This will let you analyze your waste stream, where you can fully understand what waste you deal with, why it occurs, and how it can be managed. Ultimately, you will be able to identify opportunities to increase your recycling efforts.
Due to the obvious benefits, it is recommended to complete a site audit every six months. This way, you can regularly review the situation and further refine your company’s recycling process.
Educate employees and get them involved
When your employees are on-board, your business will have a greater chance of recycling more waste. As a starting point, you should educate your workforce about the benefits of recycling. Explain to them how it will help not only the environment but also the business as a whole.
In addition, provide them with an extra incentive to get involved with recycling. Take this is an example. You set a target for a certain amount of waste to be collected. If your employees meet the target, they could be rewarded with a social event.
To further promote your initiative to go green, place recycling receptacles around the workplace.
Purchase recyclable goods
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in – there’s always the chance to replace non-recyclable items with those that can be repurposed and reused. The changes don’t even have to be major ones, either. It could be something as simple as, say, using cardboard packaging instead of polystyrene packaging. It’s an easy step that requires minimal effort, but it can make a big difference overall.
You might also be surprised at the number of sustainable products that are now available. For instance, if you look through the product line offered by Asia Pulp and Paper, you will see a wide range of recyclable items suitable for a diverse amount of industries. That product list only continues to grow as time goes on, which you can see by following APP’s social media profiles.
Don’t forget about e-waste
In this day and age, virtually every business has gone digital in some form. This could be with a website or using specialist software applications. As we transition to a more digital world, we are also creating newer, more complex forms of waste that need to be properly recycled.
Electronic waste contains toxic materials, like mercury, that need to be dealt with in a specific manner. If e-waste, such as batteries, computer monitors, cell phones, or copy machines, is not disposed of properly, it can contaminate the environment. That being said, the same principles of recycling apply to e-waste. Here’s how to deal with your business’s e-waste:
- Reduce: Purchase quality equipment and ensure it is well-maintained to maximize the lifespan of your equipment.
- Reuse: If your equipment is still in good working order, consider donating or selling it to someone who can still use it.
- Recycle: Recycle broken our extremely out of date appliances to avoid contaminating landfills. Research the organizations available in your city to recycle e-waste.
Recycle the right way
While collecting recyclable materials in receptacles around the workplace is a good starting point, there’s more that can be done. For example, you could implement a baler into your recycling plan.
What is a baler exactly? A baler is used to condense and capture materials such as cardboard, plastic, and paper. Once a specific material has been put into the baler, it is processed and ready for recycling.
This has various advantages. It keeps all of your recyclable materials in a neat and tidy order. Then once it goes to a recycling center, you could be in line for a rebate depending on the amount of waste sent. So what might seem as a disposal cost at first will be turned into an additional revenue stream.
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