Increasingly small businesses are looking for ways to green
up their waste practices. In a recent Office
Depot survey, 61% of small businesses surveyed are actively trying to
become more sustainable, and 82% of those are trying to do so through
recycling.
But implementing a recycling program for your small business
can be a daunting challenge. How do you get started? Following these three
basic steps will get you moving down the right path:
1) Conduct a waste
audit
Look
around your office and assess your waste. Examine the trash cans: the most
common recyclable material is office paper, but packaging and food containers
are prime targets, too.
2)
Reduce, Reuse…
Once
you know what you’re throwing away, think about ways to reduce your waste
footprint:
·
Work with your suppliers to reduce the amount of
packaging that they send your shipments in.
·
Implement an office policy to reduce printing.
·
Get rid of disposable cups and plates and
encourage employees to bring reusable dishware from home.
·
Trade journals can be shared among staff
members, and remove you business from unnecessary mailing lists.
·
Switch to e-newsletters instead of sending
direct mail.
3) Recycle!
Now
you can begin recycling. Set out recycle bins at convenient places, and
establish a schedule for empting them. If you use a janitorial service, work
with them to make sure that recycle bins are NOT dumped into the trash.
Contact your building management to see if there is a
recycling program already in place that you can join. If there is not, suggest
they start one. According to Miriam Zimms, a senior consultant on waste
management issues at Kessler Consulting,
the best way for small businesses to get recycling services is to work with the
landlord or property manager of the building. This doesn’t just benefit your
business, but all the businesses in the building. The more material your
collection service can pick up at one time, the more cost effective it is, and
those costs can be split among participating businesses.
Advances in the recycling industry are helping to bring down
costs for small businesses, according to Zimms. In the past, recycling has been
dual stream, meaning that recyclers had one bin for paper and one bin for
plastics, glass, and aluminum. This meant twice the cost – 2 bins, 2 trucks, 2
pickups. Now more recyclers are moving to single stream, so all recyclables go
into one bin and are picked up once, saving money and increasing efficiency.
Work with your employees on following the recycling plan and
policies. Solicit their ideas and get buy-in from as many as possible. Zimms
says that having a “sustainability champion” of the office is
key to the
program’s success. Their enthusiasm will be contagious and will help to make
the program more effective.
Consider how you label your trash and recycling bins.
Changing the ‘Trash’ label to read
‘Landfill’ will help reinforce that throwing something in the garbage
doesn’t make it go “away”. Putting a photograph of a landfill on your trash
cans will make this point even more clearly.
If your office cannot get recycling services, consider
encouraging employees to each take a bin home once a week and add it to their
home recyclables. This not only takes care of your office recycling, but also
encourages employees to recycle at home, as well.