From Guest Blogger Diana Smith: Six Recycling and Waste Management Tips for Your Business

No matter what kind of business you’re running, waste management is something you need to put a lot of effort into. Moreover, as the entire world is trying to go green, your business also needs a recycling policy. And if you’re new in the world of business, you may find this quite overwhelming. To help you, we came up with 6 recycling and waste management tips you need to be aware of.

Conduct a waste audit

Many business owners simply don’t know how to deal with waste. Just in Australia, 1.7 ton of waste per employee is generated every year. However, only about half of that waste ends up being recycled. This means there are businesses that are doing something wrong and in order to make sure you’re not among them, conducting a waste audit is recommended. That way, you’ll know exactly what kind of changes you need to make in order to take your recycling and waste management efforts to a new level.

Choose the right recycling company

The way you approach recycling and waste management is important, still, it’s also necessary to work with the right recycling company in order to really make an impact. Therefore, you’ll need to make sure you choose the recycling company you’ll work with very carefully. First, you should think about what kind of waste our company produces and do a little bit of research on it online. You also need to check whether there are any minimum and maximum quantities they handle. Discussing their payment terms and conditions is also an absolute must.

Choose the best place for your recycling bins

Many companies in Australia do have recycling and waste management policy stated clearly but their employees find it difficult to see it through. And since you need your employees’ help in order to stay in control of recycling and waste management in your company, doing whatever you can to help them is recommended. While there isn’t much you can do, choosing the right place for your recycling bins should do the trick. The general wisdom is to keep it your recycling bins away from your general bin in order to gain better results.

Use signs

Another effective way to encourage your employees to recycle is to use signs. Sometimes, just a simple sign is enough to make an employee recycle instead of throwing trash into your general bin. This may seem to be easy but getting the signs right can be tough. You need to rely on color and imagery in order to improve your company’s recycling and waste management policy. Once the signs have been placed, it’s recommended that you move them around in order to keep them fresh.

Know how to recycle paint

At some point, your business will use paint and it’s very important to mention that disposing of paint properly is something you simply have to do. Usually, between 5% and 10% of paint is left unused and if that paint isn’t disposed of the right way, it can pose great environmental and health risks. Experts can sort out water-based paint and use it to create recycled paint. Since disposing of paint isn’t as easy as disposing of other types of waste, having experts in commercial painting get the job done for you is a good idea.

Join a recycling program

As mentioned earlier, more and more people and business are trying to reduce their carbon footprint. This means there are plenty of recycling programs your business can join and perform better when it comes to recycling and waste management. What’s so great about these programs is that many of them offer some free services to companies that join them. That way, you should be able to save money while still helping preserve the environment. Do some research online and you’ll easily find a program you can join in no time.

With these 6 tips in mind, improving your company’s recycling and waste management policy should be easy. Just bear in mind that many people are working on improving the ways waste is being disposed and recycled and we might see quite a few changes in approach in the next couple of years.