Want to reduce waste and increase diversion efficiently and cost-effectively? There are so many ways to start. Here are 20 waste reduction and recycling tips specifically targeted at businesses.
1. Be in Compliance
Solid waste-related regulations are designed to reduce waste generation and improve recycling and environmental performance. As such, legal compliance can lead to benefits, including increased waste diversion and lower disposal costs. Being in compliance can also help move you closer to certification and other CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) goals. Legal compliance is not simply a business necessity. It is a valuable tool that guides your business towards greater efficiency and less waste.
Check your local solid waste authority website for updated requirements at least once per year, and follow the local news for announcements of new rules that affect area businesses. Remember, since regulations differ across jurisdictions, business chains and companies with multiple locations must comply with several sets of rules. Learn more in our compliance guide.
2. Think About Long-term Strategy: Move Towards Zero Waste
One of the best waste reduction and recycling tips is to put in place a strategy to go zero waste. This is a long-term strategy for effective waste management. Moving towards zero waste does NOT mean that you will be under pressure to produce no waste at all immediately. Instead, it is a plan that you commit to putting in place to deal seriously with waste by reducing generation and improving diversion. Learn the benefits of going Zero Waste and how businesses can move towards Zero Waste in 3 steps.
3. Understand Your Waste Stream with a Waste Audit
Did you know, a staggering 62% of the “trash” a typical commercial building discards is NOT trash at all? Instead, it is composed of recyclables or materials that can, and should, be diverted through other means. This means that most buildings are currently paying to send more materials to the landfill than they need to.
This data comes from the largest and most comprehensive waste characterization study to date focused on commercial buildings. The Great Forest study utilizes data collected through waste audits at over 100 buildings across the US and internationally, analyzing over 170,000 pounds of waste.
What’s in your trash stream? Businesses need a waste audit to find out. The data will provide the insights you need to make informed decisions. Waste audits should be done at least once a year or when you are thinking of adjusting or expanding your waste and recycling program.
4. Check Your Waste Infrastructure, Including Recycling Signs
The success of your waste management program depends in part on your waste collection infrastructure, which determines how your waste program is working on the ground.
Is your waste collection program being properly implemented, maintained, and optimized? Are your waste bins in the right places, clearly labeled, and helping you capture all materials? Are your recycling signs visible and easy to understand?
A waste infrastructure assessment can help you improve your waste collection and ensure that your program is functioning efficiently. Learn more about your waste score with the Great Forest Waste Infrastructure Scorecard.
5. Reduce Recycling Contamination
In 2018, Waste Dive proclaimed that “…contamination rates have in many ways become the most important metric in the recycling sector.” This still holds true, especially as China and other countries continue to restrict or shut out the import of contaminated recyclables into their countries. Keeping recycling “clean” is one way to maintain the value of your recyclables. Why is this important?
When recyclables are contaminated, they cannot be recycled and are treated as trash. This means that your contaminated recycling is likely headed to the landfill. In other words, they lose their value, and you pay for their removal.
Recycling contamination happens when non-recyclable materials end up in your recycling stream. For example, when food is left in recyclable containers that are placed in the recycling bin, or if items like plastic bags, wire hangers, and hazardous waste are mixed in with your recycling.
Learn more: Reduce Recycling Contamination in 6 Steps: Maintain The Value Of Your Recyclables
6. Optimize Your Waste Management With a Centralized Waste Bin System
Take a look around you. Does your office have waste and recycling bins at each desk? If it does, 62% of what you are paying to throw away is likely NOT trash at all, but commodities that you are losing to the landfill. Download our free white paper now to learn:
- Why the typical office waste and recycling setup (with bins at each desk) is inefficient
- Understand the economic, environmental, and social benefits of a centralized waste bin solution;
- Discover the cost benefits of a centralized system
- Learn how to implement a successful centralized waste bin system.
Read our case study: Increasing Recycling With A Centralized System
7. Location, Location, Location
Make sure your waste and recycling bins are placed in convenient locations. For example, paper recycling containers should be in the copy room and other high-traffic areas. There should be recycling bins for bottles and cans in the office pantry, and composting pails should be located next to coffee machines so that coffee grounds can be placed there instead of in a waste bin. A centralized waste bin system (see above) will help.
8. Right-size Your Bins
Having large trash cans and small recycling bins will not help increase your diversion rate. Getting the correct-sized bins, based on the amount of waste and recycling generated, will encourage employees and tenants to do the right thing.
9. Address Organics
Organics is sometimes referred to as the final frontier of recycling. According to the EPA, organic materials such as food waste and yard trimmings continue to be the largest component of municipal solid waste. In the largest commercial waste characterization study conducted to date, Great Forest experts found that organics — at 36% — consistently made up the largest portion of a building’s trash stream.
Given that recycling diversion programs are already in place at most businesses and buildings, incremental improvements in recycling are not going to make as much of an impact on increasing diversion as a potential organics program. Organics is the biggest missed opportunity.
Restaurants or businesses and buildings that have cafeterias or restaurants on site are good candidates for an organics program. Because organic material is heavy, addressing organic waste may reduce your waste costs significantly. Learn more:
- Organics: A Guide for Businesses and Organizations.
- How Restaurants Can Fight Food Waste and Hunger At The Same Time
10. Donate Unwanted Items
Each year, over 100 million tons of material end up in landfills. This includes many reusable items, such as furniture and electronics, from businesses that are renovating or clearing out their storage spaces. Hotels, in particular, regularly find themselves having to deal with hundreds of coffee makers, lamps, curtains, bed linens, and even bulky items like mattresses when they upgrade.
Instead of throwing away these assets, we strongly encourage businesses to donate the items for reuse. Here is a handy guide to donating for reuse: Transforming Waste – A Guide To Donating For Reuse, Avoiding Landfills
Great Forest has helped businesses donate furniture to schools, food and hotel amenities to charities and rescue missions, and we have even found homes for hard-to-place items such as an entire gym full of equipment and several thousand tons of old wallpaper!
An ongoing partnership we helped to establish between a hotel and a nonprofit ensures that the hotel always has a partner to help it find new homes for quality assets, such as 400 beds, which are now serving people in need in shelters.
11. Go Paperless
Your business can start to go paperless by selecting one area to begin the transformation. Start by requesting or issuing only paperless invoices, or stop printing reports. Brainstorm with your office to see how everyone can start working with a little less paper, one day at a time.
As part of our process to reach TRUE Zero Waste certification, Great Forest eliminated paperwork related to insurance. Moving to paperless required communicating with our vendors to request electronic copies only, as well as redesigning our backup filing system. This not only reduced paper consumption but also increased efficiency for our customer service team by reducing time spent filing and searching for documents. See our TRUE Zero Waste case study to learn more.
12. Don’t Forget About Your Shredded Documents
If your company has a lot of sensitive documents that need to be shredded, make sure that all this paper does not go into the trash. Remember to recycle shredded paper. See what happens to shredded paper at one facility.
13. Go Reusable, Say No to Single-Use Items
Encourage the use of reusable plates, mugs, glasses, and cutlery in the office pantry. Make sure employees and building tenants know that many hot beverage cups cannot be recycled because they contain a plastic liner. Here’s how to reduce the use of single-use plastic straws at your office cafeterias or food service outlets.
14. Dispose of E-waste and ITAD Responsibly
The U.S. produces about six million tons of e-waste annually. Many of these products contain toxic materials, which can pollute if they are disposed of improperly. Responsible handling of e-waste and IT assets is required by law.
Because new devices replace old ones at an almost alarming pace, many of these “obsolete” electronics and IT assets are actually still in working condition and can be reused, refurbished, or recycled.
Donate the items, take advantage of manufacturer take-back programs, or explore ITAD (IT Asset Disposition) services, which aim to maximize value recovery while ensuring data protection and environmental compliance. Choosing the right combination of e-waste recycling services or ITAD can make a world of difference in cost and logistics. One Great Forest client saved $10 million with smarter IT asset disposal, and another got its unwanted IT assets removed for free.
15. Make Your Events Zero Waste
Don’t forget about waste and recycling at your events. Did you know, any event can be planned to be zero waste? As featured in MeetingsNet, this guide is our practical roadmap for reducing waste at any event, large or small. From setting up effective waste stations to donating surplus food, these tips make it easier to align your events with your organization’s ESG goals. Read our 8-step guide to Zero-Waste events here.
16. Appoint a Green Team Leader
Green team leaders are crucial to keeping your waste reduction programs on track. They help motivate and remind colleagues to reduce waste and recycle right. They are the point person for questions and feedback. If you do not have a green team leader, make sure employees and tenants have a resource they can turn to for more information.
17. Engage and Educate Your Employees, Tenants, and Other Stakeholders
When organizations invest in sustainability but still fail to reach their goals, it is often because they are missing one crucial ingredient–stakeholder and tenant engagement. Educating stakeholders to become active participants and champions in your sustainability journey is the secret to success.
- Make sure your employees and tenants understand how to use your waste and recycling program. Organize educational outreach and training programs regularly to remind them to recycle right.
- Check that recycling awareness is included in the orientation for new employees and tenants.
- Don’t forget to include your janitorial crew and cleaning staff in your training programs. Mistakes by janitorial crews can negate all the effort your staff and tenants put into recycling. For example, cleaners might place a half-filled beverage cup they find on a desk into the recycling bin. This contaminates all the recyclables, turning them into trash. Janitorial crews should be trained on proper handling of waste and recycling, and how to prevent contamination. Learn more about our training video for cleaning staff.
18. Make a Green Statement
At least once a year, perhaps on Earth Day, consider building an attention-getting recycling display to make a big green statement, or hold an event. This could be a simple lunch and learn, a webinar on how to recycle right, or even a friendly recycling competition (see below).
19. Compete to Recycle and Reduce
There’s nothing like a little friendly competition to get people motivated. Organize a recycling competition along the lines of challenges like Recyclemania held on college campuses. Departments or floors can compete against each other to see who can increase recycling and reduce waste by the biggest amounts.
20. Announce Your Success, Showcase Your Efforts
Spread the word about your waste reduction and recycling successes. It will raise morale and encourage greater compliance. Sharing your impact will also help gather support from management for all your sustainability efforts.
Employees and tenants are increasingly demanding more transparency and accountability from their workplaces. Sustainability reporting and certifications like TRUE Zero Waste and LEED are valuable indicators of a business’s commitment to being green. Research has shown that people want to work for companies that are making a difference.