Sustainability and ESG goals remain important to companies and consumers, so increasing your efforts and decreasing your carbon footprint are good for business. Does your facility have a robust recycling program?
Getting started
Assessing your current recycling system is a great place to start when looking for opportunities to improve your processes. Conducting a waste audit can help you understand where your facility can do better, confirm areas where you can lower your carbon footprint, and evaluate where changes can save you money. Conducting this type of audit means collecting, measuring, and monitoring your facility’s waste for a set period of time to look for challenges and opportunities to refine your processes.
Once you’ve evaluated your current practices, set clear goals and objectives for improvement so you can measure your successes. This includes creating a strategy around your internal practices departmentally, as well as looking at the expectations for your suppliers and other affiliate companies.
Making change
Ensure that your recycling system is simple to use and easy to understand. Contamination is a common issue, where non-recyclable items get mixed in with recyclables, so define those categories clearly for an efficient disposal system. Consider colour coding your bins to make them easily identifiable, separating receptacles with signage that directs people for proper use, and relocating bins to high-traffic areas to make them more accessible.
Conduct some research and consider changing your internal processes, too. For example, switching to centralized printers may discourage extra use and cut down on paper output. As well, you may be inadvertently throwing out recyclable items, like lightbulbs, printer cartridges, batteries, and more.
Get creative
Gaining participation from your staff means that they are trained in the new processes and in following policies that help you achieve your ESG goals. You can even make it fun with programs that reward top performers, and internal upcycling programs for office supplies, equipment, and electronics.
It’s not just about paper and plastic, create systems to maximize your results from electronics to food waste.
Measuring and reporting are key to ramping up your recycling. Analyze the data to ensure that your changes are in fact making an environmental impact and getting you closer to your facility’s ESG goals.
