Editor’s Note: Here at Dispatches, we are always looking for ways to help our readers do things. For some of our readers, that means helping navigate the working world, for others, it means assisting in the ever challenging question, “what’s for dinner?” For still others, it means figuring out how to balance family life with everything else. In an effort to aid in all of these endeavors, we have collaborated on this article written specifically for our readers.
As if running a business didn’t already sap most of your time and energy you might begin to feel a guilty pinch from all the waste your business rids of on a daily basis. No one really likes talking about waste, but for business owners who are interested in their bottom line and in the perception of your organization, it is absolutely something you should spend time thinking about.
Plastic bags, packaging, bottles, piles of paper, you never actually realize how much waste is going to landfill until you stop to assess it. This post gives you guidance on how to get your trash under control and to start taking the right step forward to actioning an environmentally friendly solution for your garbage disposal. The planet and your customers will thank you for it.
Getting To Know Your Waste
The first step is to identify your trash in all its different forms. This may mean getting yours (or most likely your colleagues) hands a little grubby. Whatever the size of your business, you need to get into the trash can and look the waste in the face, is it food, is it rubble and soil, could it be half tins of paint? For a convenience store, this might look like one bin full of waste a day. Half of it appears to be moldy inedible food, the other half is cardboard packaging. When you have your quantity and type of garbage written down, you can move onto sourcing your options for disposing of said waste.
In-house Recycling
Could you spare the time to develop a system for in-house recycling, to save your business from contributing to an already overflowing landfill? For a law firm here’s an example, this might mean having a few designated bins plotted over the firm, with easy to read symbols of paper, for recycling paper, and plastic and aluminum, for recycling those items. If you’re opting to use such a system, please be mindful of the people who will accidentally (and on purpose) put the wrong item in the wrong bin. We are mere humans, and the adjustment to such a shocking change in the workplace could throw people. But hang in there, the change will begin to settle in, and that one culprit will eventually stop putting her tea bags in the paper bin. This isn’t your only option, you could consider switching up product packaging to biodegradable materials instead of plastic, or you could choose to swap plastic bags for paper bags. For larger businesses, this change hits on a much larger scale. Which is why the next step may be more fitting to helping you reach your environmentally friendly waste disposal goal.
Waste Management Expertise
Congratulations, you have the magnitude of business that might require your very own waste management expert. Luckily, waste disposal no longer lies with you, you can now dump the trash on your expert. You should expect your expert to follow the protocol above and still identify the type of waste you and the amount. If in-house recycling is a little too optimistic, you might need to bring in the big boys and find yourself a waste disposal company. You could choose an environmentally responsible tip truck hire company to pick up and help dispose of your waste ethically. At least this way, you can sleep at night knowing that your radioactive waste is not heading out somewhere into the Pacific sea or your rubble from a construction project not clogging up an already overflowing landfill site.
This small guide helps to give you some suggestions on how to manage your business waste in an environmentally friendly way.