With the rising threat of global warming, the need to eliminate excess waste from our landfills is essential and this also includes those businesses in the commercial sector. From reducing the amount of food wasted in restaurants to clearly labelling bins in public areas, there are many things a business can do to eliminate excess waste and up their recycling efforts.
With this in mind, the Environment Protection Act of 1990 encourages businesses to follow four steps before simply disposing of their commercial waste. These include:
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Prevent
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Reuse
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Recycle
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Recover
As experts in waste management in Stoke-on-Trent, we have put together a few top tips for helping your business eliminate excess commercial waste.
Clear signage
Whether you’re using waste containers and bins or larger waste containers like skips, always ensure that you use clear signage to encourage recycling and to stop others from just chucking any item straight into it. By putting general waste in with recycling or harmful objects into a skip, this could cause many problems and, ultimately, waste could end up going to landfill.
Psychology
When it comes to bins, try the psychological technique of having smaller bins so that people start to feel guilty for putting something that can be recycled into a general waste bin. Also, general waste can’t be recycled; change around your bins so that your general waste bins and containers are smaller than the recycling bins. This will hopefully encourage people to think about what goes where when they go to throw away their waste.
Reusing old paper documents
Although many businesses are going digital through using advanced computers, iPads and fancy apps, some businesses can’t afford to upgrade or will still need the old fashioned pen and paper at times. Before recycling old documents, why not rip these up and use them as notepaper? Whether you’re jotting down notes from a client phone call, taking measurements for an upcoming construction project or taking a customer order, reusing paper will do the job just as well as a notepad or iPad. If you’re a company that needs to package and send parcels and orders, use old newspapers and magazines as padding instead of bubble wrap and plastic.
Glass over plastic
Try and switch as much as possible from plastic to glass materials. From sealed containers to milk bottles, glass is a lot less harmful to the environment in what’s it’s made from and how it’s made and is a lot easier to recycle. It is also recycled properly; plastic is downcycled and isn’t truly recyclable, whereas glass can be recycled into more glass over and over again. You’re also more likely to reuse your glass containers, bottles and jars yourself in creative ways.
Business renovations and construction waste
If your business is looking to move offices, make renovations or works in the construction industry, we recommend using a reliable skip hire service to collect your waste and rubble. If you use a reputable service, like us at Cherry Hill Waste, they can efficiently collect and dispose of your waste whilst converting some of it back into energy.
At Cherry Hill Waste in Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent, we care about waste management and where our waste goes. From commercial skip hire to converting waste into energy, our team are dedicated to recycling all of the waste we collect until that figure hits 100%. For more information regarding our services, contact us today.
