How can you reduce your waste?

Waste is not only damaging for the environment but it is also very costly for organisations – disposing of waste correctly and efficiently can often be a timely and complicated process.

Here are some of my thoughts on how you can help to reduce your waste as an organisation as well making sure you are complying with your duty-of-care requirements…

Look into waste management schemes

This is a great way to audit your waste and ensure you have the right processes and equipment in place to keep your waste at a minimum. Audits and waste management implementations net, on average, a saving of 25-30% on the annual cost of waste management.

 Employ the waste hierarchy at every opportunity.

The waste hierarchy is a pivotal tool used in decision making. It ranks waste management options according to what has the best outcome for the environment. The five stages of the waste hierarchy are Prevention, Reuse, Recycle, Recovery and Disposal.  Prevention is the least harmful to the environment and disposal is the last resort with the most impact on the environment.

Correctly identify your waste

From the outset, if waste is not correctly identified and managed at the collection, it can see costs soar. Contaminated waste leads to landfill, and if this is not identified before it is collected it may mean all waste is headed unnecessarily to that final destination.

Adopt a life cycle thinking approach

This involves taking a holistic view of your organisation and finding ways to cut down your waste at all stages of the life cycle, from material extraction to end use. Have a read of my post on Thursday to gain an insight into our life cycle thinking approach at Polyblend!

Our dedication to sustainability

At PolyBlend, we take responsibility for the way we operate our sites and promote safe and ethical working practices to minimise the impact on the environment. We apply sustainable processes and practices within our business and the wider industry with learning from our employees, suppliers, customers and the local community. We apply long-term sustainability thinking to the design and development of the
lifecycle of our products, services, and the wellbeing of our employees. We further act as a responsible manufacturer of high-performance sustainable products.

Landfill avoidance has always been high on our environmental agenda at PolyBlend. This means ensuring waste streams are active and effective to prevent landfill and processes and training is in place to ensure the waste hierarchy is utilised at every opportunity.