Featured image by Gary Chan on Unsplash
By encouraging the reusing and recycling of products in your business, you can significantly reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfills. Minimizing your business’s waste can also save you plenty of time and money. But what steps can you take to develop a proper waste management plan for your company?
Whether your state demands it or not, recycling is essential for everyone. The decision to recycle shouldn’t stop at your household. It can be more beneficial to recycle in a commercial space than in a residential one. Recycling benefits your business by reducing raw material costs while maximizing profitability.
Most businesses are trying to increase their efforts to go green. Business leaders understand that these measures will lead to carbon footprint reduction and saving money. In fact, according to research, 57% of companies worldwide have adopted eco-friendly practices in their daily operations.
One of the most accessible and affordable ways to become more sustainable in your company is through proper recycling. How can you improve recycling in your business?
Reduce Paper Consumption
Reducing paper consumption a great way to reduce waste production, as papers have the most significant volume of waste in an office. It’s thus essential to try to go paperless or use other materials.
If you still use paper, consider using recycled paper. If you can reduce paper waste in your workplace, you’ll also positively affect the environment.
Paper makes up the biggest part of the unrecycled waste that comes from offices. Hundreds of pieces of paper are wasted daily while it takes around 24 trees to make one ton of paper. Undoubtedly, we all need to make some changes and learn to go paperless.
As a business leader, you must find highly supportive ways to reduce paper usage and encourage your workers to do the same. Here are a few innovative ways to reduce paper in your company.
RELATED ARTICLE: 3 REASONS WHY YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS TO BE USING ELECTRONIC SIGNATURES
Reduce Waste by Thinking Twice Before Printing
Printing less is one good way to reduce paper waste. Printing has become a habit for some people. So in your next business meeting, make sure you talk about the need to recycle more and print less. Everyone in your company can easily add all documents to the cloud.
Support and Encourage Saving Paper
It’s essential to have a culture that strengthens the paperless message. This way, everyone thinks about reducing paper waste.
Mil-tek from Denmark helps businesses go paperless. You can order waste compactors and balers to fit your business needs.
Additionally, hundreds of millions of people have decided to replace billions of sheets of paper with digital processes. So how can you encourage your team to save paper? Increase sustainability awareness for all your employees and help them find ways to save paper in their specific tasks.
Keep Recycling Bins at Hand
Even if you go paperless, there will always be some items in need of suitable disposal. Invest in proper recycling bins to keep recyclables from being thrown away in the trash.
Why Is Recycling in Business Important?
If your business does not actively engage in recycling, you could be missing out on a lot of unseen benefits. Not only does recycling benefit the environment, but it’s also great for your business. One of the primary reasons recycling is essential is that it simply saves money. A well-established recycling program can save your business thousands of dollars each year.
Moreover, recycling programs help employees understand and be aware of the garbage they’re producing and how they dispose of it.
Businesses can also sell recyclable waste for other uses. They can even earn back some of the money that waste was used for to support their recycling program.
Recycling technology continues to evolve. Plastic, metals, and glass become more valuable as the cost of materials rises. Learn about the organizations in your area that collect recyclable materials and find out how much each material is worth.
Recycling Attracts High-Quality Workers and Enhances Employee Retention
Consumers nowadays demand sustainable products, and employees do, too. They’re more motivated to work for companies that recycle. Studies have shown that workplace recycling is much more important to millennials than other generations.
In fact, one in ten millennials are willing to change their jobs if their employees aren’t running sustainable operations.
Managing Waste Helps Prevent Global Warming
Recycling has become a part of everyone’s everyday lives, especially businesses. But can recycling help reduce global warming?
There’s no denying recycling plays a vital role in reducing CO2 emissions. Since it converts waste into new products, it helps support the planet’s sustainability. Choosing recycled items helps reduce energy consumption, debris, and direct emissions.
When evaluating recycling and worldwide waste, there are clear climate benefits. Instead of throwing away recyclable items, it’s best to send them to recycling companies and decrease the trash in landfills.
RELATED ARTICLE: DEALING WITH DIRT AND CLUTTER IN THE WORKPLACE
Can You Contribute to a Better System of Managing Waste?
How can you contribute to a more efficient system and help solve the climate crisis?
Reusing your items is one of the best changes in your lifestyle toward a better and more sustainable world. It helps reduce your waste, limiting the need for recycling constantly. It also allows you to discover new uses for products.
Also, more and more people purchase products made from recycled materials, significantly reducing the need to extract new raw materials.
Sorting your recyclables into the proper containers is vital to ensure an efficient system. Contamination reduces the quality of materials in the bin. Too many people throw products in the same bin thinking that the facilities will sort them out.
Although these recovery facilities are well-equipped, throwing mixed materials into the same container isn’t the best thing to do. Another mistake is to throw non-recyclables in the trash. Sometimes these non-recyclables may include dirty items. Once the debris is contaminated, it becomes difficult to convert the waste into new high-quality products.
Choose to minimize waste in the workplace and keep your business’s costs low while helping the environment in myriad ways.
RELATED ARTICLE: SAVING SPACE SAVES VALUABLE RESOURCES