Ways to reduce your footprint - waste and recycling

Waste & recycling

Around a quarter of waste produced in the UK is produced by the business sector. 70% of this is recyclable but the majority still heads for landfill sites. This places a responsibility on us all to do what we can to reduce our impact. And the perfect start is a successful recycling programme along with embedding these changes amongst your staff.

To start the process of reducing your waste, you are advised to do a waste audit. Essentially, all a waste audit involves is separating your waste into different categories (e.g. cardboard, glass, etc.) and weighing how much you produce over a given time, often a week. If you are a small company with a small amount of waste, you can do one yourself, or you can hire a professional to conduct one for you. 

Once you have completed your waste audit, you can then plan how to reduce your waste. The best way to do this is to follow the waste hierarchy. You should assess your waste and try to tackle it using the following steps:

• Prevention: the most effective way of reducing waste is to stop it from happening in the first place. 
• Reuse: the next step is to try and reuse anything that you are currently throwing away.
• Recycle: identify anything that is currently being thrown in the waste bin that should be being recycled.
• Recovery: identifying any waste that could be used by others to generate a new product
• Disposal: the final step is to process the rest for landfill or incineration.

To be most effective, the waste hierarchy should be done in the order they are listed, so prevention should always be the first choice. 

Here are some practical tips you can try to reduce waste in your business.  

• You can work with suppliers of any product you use to remove unnecessary packaging 

• You can remove any unnecessary packaging from your own products and implement a single use plastic ban in the office for your employees.
• Try switching away from paper to digital in as many situations as you can  
• If you are a food business there are a number of apps available, which connects residents with local businesses so surplus food can be shared, not thrown away. 
• Separate your recycling into separate bins which improves recycling rates and gives you the opportunity to potentially sell your waste. Common separate bins would be cardboard, paper, glass, tin cans/aluminium, food, and (most) plastics. 

Consult the government list of approved waste buyers to see if any of your waste can be sold.