How to Reduce Waste at the Workplace
Offices and other places of business can do many activities to minimize their impact on the environment. One of the most effective methods of doing this in is by reducing waste. In the process they can also save money on materials and waste disposal costs.
Step 1: Understanding Your Waste
Talk to the person who collects up your trash. Determine how much material your place of business discards in a week. If your company does recycle make sure that you understand what sorting and cleaning needs to be done so the firm collecting those materials can best handle them. If your company does not already recycle, ascertain whether the trash hauler can pick up recyclables and/or compostables along with regular trash. Try to determine where the "away" in "throw something away" is located. Is the disposed of in your community, or is the wasted shipped far away? Where are your recyclables being processed? Could you set up programs to purchase products made from recycled materials from those firms?
Step 2: The Waste Audit
Conduct a waste audit at the workplace. Examine everything staff members throw away in the course of a week. Separate those materials according to whether they can be reused, recycled, or composted. Also as part of the audit, look for hazardous substance which should not be sent to a landfill.
Step 3: Source Reduction
One method of reducing waste is by not purchasing unneeded material. Products may have unnecessary packaging, such as individually wrapped pens. Larger quantities of material may require the same amount of packaging as smaller quantities. For example, it does not require much more paperboard to hold 150 paper clips versus 100 paper clips, thus the packaging per paperclip is less.
Step 4: Reuse
Examine the materials that can be reused and institute practices to prevent those products from winding up in the wastebasket. Common examples are paper clips, paper with printing on only one side, and empty cardboard boxes. When joing documents, remember paper clips can be used multiple times, while staples can only be used once. Paper with printing on only one side can be used for first draft documents for proofreading, inter-office memos, or scrap paper for jotting down notes. Often office workers are looking for boxes for household moving, carrying reports, or general storage. If an individual is looking for boxes, they can put their name on the box before it is opened to "stake a claim" to it.
Step 5: Composting
If possible, set up a compost pile or worm bin at your place of work. A compost pile or bin is relatively easy to construct. Any plant waste can be put in the pile such as grass clippings, leaves, paper with vegetable based inks, apple cores, onion skins, banana peels, coffee grounds and filters(a big one for most offices!), tea bags, and much more. After organisms living in the soil feed on the material, they convert it to a rich soil amendment which can be used on plantings. It might be beneficial to start a relationship with your landscaper/lawn care company to use compost created by your business on plantings around your building. Also instead of paying to haul yard waste away, the grounds crew might be able to set up a compost bin on site. If your office does not have access to outside space, you can also do composting inside your office. A worm bin can be purchased or built to handle all the waste your office produces. Red wigglers will eat up your coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells, and banana peels. There is no odor produced from properly maintained bins. The worms can be office pets as the family of worms grows. The castings produced by the worms are a great amendment for office plants.
Step 6: Recycling
Try to reduce the amount of material thrown out by recycling. Many materials can be recycled around the office. Paper can be recycled by a variety of sources, but make sure that material is sorted and cleaned properly. Plastics windows in envelopes, mailing labels, sticky notes, and other materials may or may not contaminate the paper supply depending on the end usage. Talk to the company that takes this material and post the "rules" for paper recycling by the copy machine, mail room, and other places where paper is put in recycle bins. Other material, such as metal, plastic, polystyrene, and glass may be recycled as well. Talk to your waste hauler, or the provider of these materials to see if they can be picked up. It might be possible to hook up with curbside programs to pick up these recyclables. There might even be an ambitious person in your office to take these materials to a drop-off center.
Step 7: Hazardous Waste
Gather and dispose of hazardous waste properly. Many cleaners, deodorizers, oil-based paints, pesticides, fertilizers, and fuels may be stored at a workplace. If these materials are not going to be used they should be taken to the household hazardous waste collection day which takes place twice a year in Genesee County. The largest portion of hazardous waste in office trash is probably batteries. Batteries can contain lead, mercury, and cadmium, all which are very dangerous when they get into the environment. It is simple to have a coffee can or empty jug to collect batteries until the next hazardous waste collection day.
Step 8: Purchasing Recycled Materials
Buy products made from recycled materials. Every time you make a purchase, you are voting with your dollars. By purcahsing recycled products, you are increasing demand for those materials, so more businesses will make them available. In the long term, this can lead to increased value for recycled waste and cheaper products due to more competition.
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