Reaping the rewards of waste management best practice
Every business has a duty of care to manage their waste – and it goes beyond getting your bins collected regularly.
Since January 2015, UK waste regulations require businesses to separate recyclable material – paper, plastic, metal and glass – from other waste. As part of the EU Waste Framework Directive, the regulations aim to drive improvement in the quality and quantities of recycling across the whole of Europe.
For DS Smith, separating recycling material early in the recycling process, or ‘source segregation’, is the best way to ensure that consistently high-quality materials are collected for reprocessing.
There’s a degree of flexibility in the ways that EU member states have responded to the directive. If it is not ‘technically, environmentally or economically practicable’ for these four materials to be collected separately, the case can be made for collecting materials through other systems, such as mixed collections. This provides for compliance, but not best practice.
But the regulations were introduced with the purpose of boosting the levels of quality in recycling. Quality in recycling can reduce waste management costs, and directly improve your business’s bottom line.
Compliance might mean you’re on the right side of the law, but being compliant doesn’t mean that you’re getting the most out of your recycling & waste management. Here’s what you should be considering in order to reap the rewards of best practice.
Know where it’s going
The first step to making savings is knowing what happens to your recycling.
Do you know where it goes after it’s been collected? There’s an important distinction to make between collection rates and recycling rates – because material might be collected and then sent to energy recovery to be burned, or they might even end up in landfill. This is especially true if you are not contributing, through effective source segregation, to providing quality material for recycling.
Not knowing where your recycling ends up means that you’re locked out from making the most of your resources. For example, if the paper and cardboard you produce is of a high enough quality to be recycled, you could be adding a new revenue stream to your business. A materials audit should show you what you produce – and where it ends up.
The thinking behind the system
Some organisations may argue that separate collections aren’t cost-effective because they could require more vehicles on the road to collect all of that material.
That argument misses a key point from the recycler’s perspective, though – which is that when contaminants like glass, food and metal get into recyclable material, it can break recycling machinery completely, causing production to stop until the contamination is cleared.
That can cost thousands – and the contaminated material can’t be recycled anyway. It will either end up burned or landfilled. That’s why quality in recycling is crucial for ensuring successful reuse of resources. Of course nobody wants to create more ‘recycling miles’ than is needed. Best practice is about understanding how to put processes in place that are efficient for everyone – waste producers, collectors, and processors alike.
If a company is truly following the principles of the waste hierarchy, they will want to focus on preventing waste – and reusing and recycling it once it’s generated. Recovery and landfill are the least favourable options, and this needs to be recognised in waste management plans and operations.
Too much recyclable material is needlessly wasted through incineration or landfill because of poor collection choices.
So where compliance is fine, best practice in your waste management will save costs and boost production across the whole economy.
That’s good for everyone.
Communicate clearly
A successful reduce, reuse and recycling programme relies on a good process and good practice.
At DS Smith, we help our customers to drive change across their businesses. Communicating your programme needs to be continual – because your employees are the key to making your recycling work.
Organisations can’t assume that people will know what they are supposed to do. Often, changing your recycling process means that staff members must alter their habits, so making instructions clear and concise is crucial.
But communication doesn’t just mean telling people what to do. It’s important to celebrate how well they’ve done. Once your employees know how they’re making a difference, they’re more likely to get involved!
- Give updates on how much material has been collected
- Advise them how many trees they’ve saved
- Donate savings from good recycling to a local charity
Show your teams how they make a difference, and best practice can motivate your whole organisation.
The bigger picture
Through clear communications and collections that focus on quality, you can reap the rewards of recycling best practice.
Good waste management makes good business sense. Focusing on best in class separate collection standards means that your business will generate high-quality materials, which are good for the environment and for the economy. It will also cut down on contamination – which is the only way to ensure that more of the material we collect is actually successfully recycled.