How to Reduce Waste?

Business waste can result from numerous areas within your business and comes in many different forms, from excess materials to energy but all of which harm either the bottom line or the environment. Due to these costs, it is key as a business to reduce waste. Although waste within a business is unavoidable, the volume of waste can be diminished and there are many ways to reduce waste. 

Reducing waste can seem like an insurmountable task, which is just another cost to your business. However, in reality, reducing waste can benefit your business in many different ways: reducing costs, meeting legal requirements, helping the environment and improving your public image. This article can assist in providing the answers to the questions that you have about how to reduce waste in your business and enable you to reap the rewards.

Reducing Waste at its Origin

The first step required to effectively reduce waste within your business is to minimise the amount of waste produced. Therefore, initially, an audit of waste needs to be completed to outline all the current areas where waste is produced. This will cover all aspects of your business and the operations which you conduct. This can allow all the issues to be discovered and hence dealt with. There are several different ways to address these problem areas and reduce waste within your business. For example, going paperless is an easy approach that can significantly reduces waste within your business.

Further to this, there is the ability to remove waste from a number of different areas such as equipment, supplies, raw materials and energy. Although some of these changes may only be subtle, when employed throughout the breadth of any business they can make a significant impact on reducing the overall waste produced by the business.

Around the Office

There are a wide variety of contributors to business waste within the office that you may not be aware of, and these can add up, hence there is an improvement to be made. The majority of these changes are small and can be done with ease but will combine to create a noticeable difference. 

Firstly, as mentioned above, going paperless is an excellent way of reducing waste, or if this is not fully possible, then by reducing paper usage as much as possible and having many paper/card recycling bins around the office can reduce this impact. Similarly, changing any plastic cutlery and single-use cups from the kitchen and replacing them with proper crockery and cutlery can make a large difference over a year. Another simple, yet effective way of reducing waste is through using energy-efficient equipment from lightbulbs to monitors and printers to reduce emissions and increase efficiency within the office. Therefore, there are numerous ways of reducing waste and can provide a key improvement throughout the office by adjusting a few things, which are possible for every business.

Packaging

Despite the need for packaging in many business cases, it is often excessively used when a much smaller amount would do the job, especially in the case of cardboard. This provides another opportunity to reduce waste for your business. Excess packaging is a major component of business waste, and hence can be significantly reduced in some ways. This can be done throughout numerous points within the supply chain from contacting suppliers and requesting reduced packaging to the way you offer your final product to the consumer. Even by removing the amount of packaging by 5% at each point in the supply chain, the overall waste can be significantly reduced. This goes to show how many ways to reduce waste there are in each business operation. 

Composting

If you produce a large volume of organic and food waste, then composting is the answer. It is a very simple solution to quite a significant issue, especially due to the size and impact of the bi-products of food decomposition, which would otherwise be very expensive to send to landfills. Composting is a very simple process that requires minimum effort and maintenance, but can have seriously positive effects in reducing waste. Therefore, by introducing a compost bin or compost area at your business, you can reduce the need for this extra cost whilst simultaneously benefiting the environment and ecosystem.

Re-use

Some forms of business waste can be reused for different purposes. This is an excellent way to reduce waste, as previously unwanted materials can be repurposed to meet business needs. This then removes the need to purchase new items which are good for the environment. For example, using refills for office supplies and equipment rather than single-use ones. Re-using can also be completed in conjunction with other firms through an activity called resource matching, where you can sell or exchange unwanted products or waste with another company that has a use for them.

Recycling

The next step is to ensure that the waste you produce is dealt with correctly. Even with a large amount of waste reduction, there is always going to be a certain amount of waste produced, which is inevitable. However, if this is dealt with properly through recycling, then the negative impact can be significantly reduced. There is a wide range of materials that can now be recycled and transformed into other useful products. This includes plastics, metals, wood and paper. For example, at Ron Hull, we provide waste management recycling and recycle 100% of the waste that is sent to us. This ranges from textiles and timber to metals and rubble, which are all recycled for alternative uses.

Hazardous Waste

Despite the best efforts of reducing waste, there are certain chemicals, materials and products which are harmful to humans and the environment, which need to be disposed of safely. This hazardous waste must be disposed of by experts as there are numerous potential risks caused by the unsafe removal of hazardous waste. At Ron Hull, we offer hazardous waste consultancy through our team of experts who can ensure your business deals with their hazardous waste in a safe and regulated manner to avoid negatively impacting the environment and keeping compliance.

Sustainability

To ensure that your business continues to reduce waste, you must remain vigilant and review all waste management processes continually to ensure you are making the most out of your waste management programme. One method of ensuring waste is reduced on an ongoing basis is to promote it throughout the business and encourage employee involvement, whether this via incentive schemes or simply brainstorming ideas. By including and integrating employees in business waste management can ensure that it remains significant and effective within your business. As the start of the article explains, an audit of your business processes and waste management are needed to see where issues lie, therefore, this needs to be an ongoing process to ensure your business is using all the ways it can to reduce waste.

Summary

Overall, there are a wide variety of ways to reduce waste within your business. A lot stems from creativity and how many ways of reducing waste you can come up with. The bottom line is that the more ways you employ and sustain to reduce waste for your business, the better off you will be.

If you are interested in learning more about how your business can reduce waste, please get in contact with us today.