9 Tips to Increase Your Office Recycling
by Arnab Dey Business 31 March 2022
Recycling is the method involved in collecting and processing materials (that could contrarily be thrown away as trash) and making them become new products.
Recycling is beneficial for several reasons which include prevention of pollution, reduction of the amount of waste, reduction of the need to harvest raw materials, it is energy-saving, enables products to be utilized to their fullest extent, reduction of the amount of waste that ends up in landfills, and reduction of the emissions of greenhouse gas.
Increasing your office recycling improves your brand image. So even if you have an existing recycling program already in place, there are several things you can introduce to your office which will help increase your recycling efforts and decrease your carbon footprint. Below are tips to increase your office recycling.
9 Tips to Increase Your Office Recycling
1. Gather More
Recycling these days goes beyond only paper, bottles, and cans. There are a lot of other waste items from landfills your office can be diverting. Cell phones, computers, and other e-waste items are a few of the numerous materials recycling companies reclaim and repurpose.
You could conduct a waste audit of your facility using a recycling company in Port Orange, FL to help gain a better understanding of what materials are usually being trashed instead of being recycled such as batteries, light bulbs, etc. Statistics show that on a global level, we produce about 2.12 billion tons of waste yearly.
2. Separate Organics
By the addition of an organics stream to your office recycling program, you will be able to significantly increase your organization’s diversion rate and even attain zero-waste in some cases.
Also, when compostable materials are collected and properly processed, you can make use of them to help grow crops, revive a land deficient in nutrients, and even generate power.
Examples of such compostable materials include food scraps, coffee grinds, and tea bags.
3. Employ the Use of Centralized Recycling Bins
When individual employees have a convenient bin under their desk, they tend to just throw away anything into the bin, since all they have to do is just to lower their hand under their desk anyway.
But when they have to sort their waste before throwing it in a centralized recycle bin, they become more aware of what they’re tossing out.
Also, through the graphics on those central bins, they become informed about what can be recycled and what can’t be recycled. Therefore, remove individual employees’ waste and recycling bins.
4. Encourage Litter-Less Lunches
You could encourage a litter-less lunch on the part of your employees by providing them with a reusable lunch bag. This prevents them from bringing their lunch to the office in materials that are used once and thereafter tossed.
You could also promote a litter-less lunch by imploring your employees to be conscious of what they use to bring lunch into the office.
5. Discard Take Out Coffee Cups
Even though it may be impossible to ask employees to give up taking coffee, just ponder upon how many take-out coffee cups get thrown away daily in the office waste bins.
Just like the provision of a reusable lunch bag, you should also provide them with reusable mugs for coffee and water bottles. There will certainly be a drastic reduction in the number of coffee cups filling up your waste streams daily.
6. Reduce the Waste Coming into Your Office
From the angle of the 3Rs of recycling and active increment of your waste diversion rate, and the advisable thing you can do is to reduce the amount of waste being supplied into your office. Focus on your supply stream and what is brought into the office by you or any other person.
You can also make it known to your vendors to bring in only compostable or recyclable items so they note it and be conscious of it.
When you can control the waste coming in, you have a higher chance of diverting more waste from landfills since you are already producing reusable or recyclable wastes.
7. Place Cards to Set Reminders
In strategic places in your offices such as in the cafeteria or lunchroom, as well as at the center of virtually all tables, you could employ the method of writing words like “do you know cell phones can be recycled?” Or “remember to recycle papers today”, etc, and place them in those places. Those words tend to remind your employees of the daily sorting of their waste.
8. Set Up an Upcycle Station
An upcycle station can be set up by designating a shelving area where old office computers, furniture, phones, etc can be carefully placed and organized.
Whenever an employee needs an office supply, the protocol is that the upcycle station should be checked first before ordering new items if it’s unavailable. An upcycle station allows the reuse of old office supplies and this encourages recycling in offices.
9. Paperless policy
Although it is quite impossible to not use paper in your office, there are steps by which you can reduce the usage of paper. For example, rather than printing out a document several times due to one mistake or the other, admonish your employees to thoroughly edit and proofread all documents on the computer before printing on recyclable paper.
Also, employ printing on both sides of a sheet of paper except it’s a formal document. Furthermore, company announcements and memos can be sent via email or posted on an online message board.
In addition, make your vendors and clients aware of your paperless policy, stating your motive behind it, and instead of paper copies of purchasing and invoicing, work with your accounting and customer service to change all billing systems to online.
Office Recycling
Your intentionality to increase recycling in your office will undoubtedly help you keep your fingers crossed on achieving recycling by observing the above-listed tips.
Your intentionality will also send a message across to your employees which will help them cooperate with you, especially if punishment is attached to them violating the recycling rules. The combined efforts will help accelerate the results of your recycling program as soon as possible.
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