Looking to increase your recycling, here’s our top tips.

The amount of waste a company generates has an enormous environmental impact but processing commercial waste also comes with significant costs. By focusing on recycling more you can actually save money and help the environment too!.

Most businesses have a recycling program in place, but to make sure you are recycling all you can, have a look at our top tips to see if you can make some simple changes to enhance your current program. 

1. Look in your bins. This is not how most people want to spend a day but, it gives a great insight into what is and isn’t being recycled. If you know what is being missed or forgotten about, you can take steps to make changes. 

2. Speak to your waste contractor to find out what was recycled and what was sent to landfill or RDF (refuse derived fuel) the previous year or two. This will allow you to see not only opportunities to recycle more, but to also reduce costs and missed recycling opportunities. 

3. Encourage more recycling, take away employees’ individual bins, and have centralised bins around the office. Make sure they are clearly labelled with what should and shouldn’t be put in each bin. 

4. How do your staff feel about recycling, do they think that positive change can be made? To engage staff, let them know what you want to achieve, set objectives and give regular updates on progress. Achievable goals help keep people invested if its saving trees or reducing the company carbon footprint by 5% keep everyone informed and involved. 

5. Arrange for a waste audit to be carried out by an external company, lots of waste companies offer this free of charge too. They will be able to give you hints and tips specific to your organisation. As specialists, they can look beyond just paper and plastic to examine the various types of waste materials you generate. The volumes of each material, how they are collected and handled internally, and finally, how they are disposed of.

Without too much effort these small changes could make a big difference.  If every company in the UK recycled just 1% more can you imagine the impact that would have?