Sustainable waste management is a thought on everyone’s minds nowadays; how can I help my community and environment while also managing mine and my business’ waste?
Disposing of waste sustainably involved sorting your business energy and resources to help the world become a better place for future generations.
Improper waste disposal leads to contamination of surface water, ground water, the air, and land. This ends up harming the environment and all who live in it, including animals, plants, insects, and humans.
When you’re disposing of waste from your business, you can use the three R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle.
The largest industries for waste production are agriculture, fast fashion, food, construction, and technology.
The US produces an estimated 7.6 billion tons of industrial waste every year. Big cities, like NYC, spend around $1 million per day on hauling trash to landfills.
The amount of wood and paper that is thrown away each year is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years.
On average, recycling costs $30 per ton, while landfills cost around $75 to incinerate.
From a business standpoint, sustainable waste management practices can lead to a reduction in your waste removal spending and more potential tax benefits. You can also improve community engagement and help improve the health and safety in your community.
When you work to reduce your waste and to carry out sustainable business and waste practices, you’re giving back to your community. Consistent recycling creates more jobs aimed toward sustainable practices. Supporting locally-produced and locally-recycled products helps with the local economy too.
If you’ve been wondering how to manage waste for your business sustainably, read on to learn about our top tips.
You’ll need to analyze and identify where the largest amounts of waste are coming from. Just like when you go through your phone to delete the items taking up the most storage, it’s important to go through your business practices and see what is creating the most waste.
You can then decide if all that waste is necessary. Is some of the waste able to be separated into recycling? Are you able to reuse some of the materials?
About one-third of a landfill dump is made of packaging material and over 60% of an average landfill is composed of recyclable materials like paper, glass, plastic, and metal.
You can help reduce waste by taking a closer look at what you’re throwing away.
We know running a business is hard, but if you’ve been thinking about ways to reduce the amounts of waste your business creates, recycling programs are necessary to add to your schedule.
You’ll need to create a long-term plan focused on planning and implementing waste reduction strategies. Figure out what you’re throwing away and what you’re recycling.
You can set waste reduction goals, implement your plan, promote your program to your employees and encourage them to participate, and offer incentives to reduce waste.
Talk with other local businesses to see what recycling centers they use. You can identify organizations that can efficiently work with your waste. You can also create problem-solving techniques for future issues.
Setting and implementing measurable goals is the best way to create change. You’ll be able to prioritize the strategies that help and disengage with the strategies that don’t.
The Green Office Academy offers resources on how to track and dispose of waste.
At a smaller scale within your business, you can make it hard to do the wrong thing.
Clearly mark your recycling and your trash so that people know what can go where. You can put recycling bins next to desks and larger trash bins in a more central location so it’s less convenient to get to.
Print out recycling tips for materials that are commonly thrown away, like cans, paper, plastic, cardboard, and more. There are even ways to toss electronics and e-waste materials such as batteries.
Certain materials, like cloth scraps, office supplies, cables, and more can also be reused or even packaged together and donated.
Partnering with local organizations will help manage waste for your business sustainably. Locally sourcing your goods and raw materials cuts down on gas emissions made during transportation.
When local businesses work with other local businesses, money is circulated throughout the community rather than large national corporations. So in addition to helping with environmental sustainability, you’re also improving the economic health of your city.
Collaboration with local partners can help create a cooperation between your companies and the community. You’ll have more power as a community when speaking with local government about sustainability practices. You’ll be able to have a greater influence on waste management at large when you work with other businesses in the area.
Sustainable waste practices can seem like a lot of effort for a return that may take a while to come (see the quote from Hamilton):
“What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.”
However, we know from experience that doing the right thing for the environment not only helps the environment and community, but with company and personal morale.
In the long run, you’ll save money on disposal costs. You’ll have the knowledge you need to reduce hauling costs and find recycling services that fit your needs.
You’ll be able to streamline waste audits and resource management. The more you practice at tracking your waste and utilizing recycling services, the easier it will feel over time. You can use your resources more effectively instead of letting your money go to waste. Just like any activity, sustainability takes practice and time to perfect.
You can reduce the effect of waste on the environment. Less trips to the landfill mean less greenhouse gas emissions. Taking up less space in a landfill reduces the amount of land needed. You’ll be reducing the materials in a landfill that leads to groundwater and air pollution, as well as landfill incidents.
You’ll be protecting the world’s natural and unrenewable resources. Fuel, clean water, lumber, and ore are all materials that are better off in the environment than in a factory. By reducing the amount of raw materials needed to produce your goods, you can reuse and recycle what’s already available and made. Sourcing from recycling plants and local manufacturers helps decrease your carbon footprint.
We encourage everyone and every business to carefully examine their waste practices. At Discount Dumpster, we run frequent waste audits to make sure that our practices are as sustainable and safe for the environment and our communities.
We partner with local businesses to handle recyclable materials that come our way and we offer educational resources on best practices for your own waste management.
Give us a call today to learn how you can be a part of the change!
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