Reduce your waste in business
What you throw away
We should be making the most of everything we buy, not throwing away things that still have life left in them.
To find out what your business is throwing away, you can pay a company to analyse your waste or you can look through it yourself
Follow these easy steps:
- Choose a week or two-week period that is representative of your working time and workload.
- Tell your staff what you are going to do and why you are doing it. Ask for their help to make it work.
- On the day before you start looking at your rubbish make sure that all the bins are emptied.
- Choose some locations in your offices to put labelled bins for your staff to sort the rubbish into different categories. The number of locations and bins will depend on the size and layout of your offices and the nature off your businessPut in clearly labelled bins for items you know you generate through your work, such as:
- Paper and cardboard
- Plastic
- Food
- Metals
- Glass
- Wood
- Look at what has been put in these bins. How often you check will depend on how much rubbish you produce and the size of the bins you provide. You can measure the weight of the bins, the volume of rubbish and look at individual items
- Write up what you find and make some recommendations to help you throw away less and get more from products before they are binned. For example, you could set the photocopier or printer to print double-sided, offer customers a chance to take leftovers home, or start cutting out products nearer the edge of the wood to reduce off-cuts
If you want to know more about carrying out an analysis yourself, contact us for more tailored advice.