Waste
management tips for business
By encouraging reuse, recycling and resource recovery in
your business, you can reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill.
Reducing your business's waste can save you money, and benefit the environment.
Steps to develop a better waste management plan for your
business
Follow these steps to effectively manage waste in your
business:
Step
1 - Measure business waste
For a quick visual waste assessment, go around to all the
bins presented for collection just before the collection truck arrives and see
how full they are. Don't worry if there are different sized bins; simply note
down the sizes, an estimate of how full they are, and how often waste is
collected.
For example, there might be a standard domestic 240L wheelie
bin that is 50% full and collected once a week, equalling 120L of waste per
week.
Once you have collated this information, you will know how
much waste material your business produces within a given time frame.
Step
2 - Reduce waste going to landfill
Identify options to:
Reduce - can waste be avoided or reduced by the way
your business obtains goods and services or by changing the way it operates?
Reuse - does another local business have a use for the
waste materials you produce?
Recycle - what materials can be targeted for recycling?
Step
3 - Identify local collectors of recyclable materials
By knowing how much material your business produces over a
period of time, and the types of materials that can be diverted from landfill,
you can identify the most suitable waste and recycling collection contractors.
Step
4 - Understand waste and recycling collection contracts
You should try to secure the most appropriate collection
arrangement for the recoverable materials you produce. Your first contact
should be your current waste service provider, who may be a private operator or
the local council.
As part of investigating what can be recycled, you also need
to consider what impact your waste or recycling contract arrangements are going
to have on your ability to recycle. For example, if your recycling is picked up
fortnightly, ensure that your recycling bin is large enough to hold 2 weeks
worth of recycling or change your contract to have your bin picked up weekly.
Think about what your current contract offers and how this
may affect your waste and recycling practices. Remember that a waste or
recycling contract is a legal document and you may require independent legal
advice.
Step
5 - Implement material collection systems at business premises
Different businesses generate different types of recoverable
materials. The bins emptied into the collection truck, typically wheelie bins
and bulk bins, may not be the same bins used for collecting the material around
your business premises. How you separate materials in your business will be
determined by how waste is collected.
For example, if you have separate paper or cardboard
collection services, then paper and cardboard will need to be separated from
other recyclable materials, preferably at the point where they are generated.
This requires clear communication and signage to be available to staff,
cleaners and, in some cases, clients.
If your business is in a strip of shops or a shopping centre
with shared bins, communicate with other business owners to ensure waste is
being sorted correctly.
Use signage to help your business implement an
effective recycling system.
What are the standard colours for recycling and waste?
Generally, there is no national waste colour coding system in South Africa. Local Councils and waste collection companies generally will supply their own colour. Below is a example of how most companies in South Africa class waste
4 Tips
for Creating a Better Waste Management Plan
Recycling and waste management should be implemented as a
resource management system, not a waste management system. As recycling
programs began to be implemented in the 1970s and 1980s they were thought of as
part of the solid waste collection system. Recycling programs were expected to
cover their costs in a manner similar to waste collection programs: through
user fees or local taxes. This often resulted in recycling program costs and
revenues incorporated into the overall waste collection system, even when the
increase in recycling resulted in a reduction in overall system costs,
especially where disposal costs were high. Today the approach that is
considered a “best practice” is to view recyclables as commodities that are
managed under a resource management system consistent with management
frameworks such as “sustainable materials management” and “zero waste”.
#1. Stop
Thinking Waste Management – Think Sustainable Materials Management
A resource management plan is part of an integrated
materials management strategy, in which a municipality makes deliberate
decisions about how materials should flow. The plan elements then become
specific tactics to deal with specific materials after they have been consumed.
Those elements include:
Prevention
Reuse
Generation
Source Separation (recyclables and organics)
Recovery
Collection
Transfer
Recycling
Treatment
Disposal
It can also define the approaches to contracting for
services and funding program services. The key program areas that are
incorporated in effective resource management plans include:
Single Stream Recycling
Commercial Recycling
Organic and Food Waste Recovery
Multi-family Recycling
Away from Home and Special Event Recycling
Waste Awareness and ‘How to Recycle’ Communications
#2. Planning is a Process – Not an Event
A plan is the framework that helps us identify our starting
point (where are we now), our objective (where do we want to be in the future),
the way to reach our objective (how are we going to get there) and finally the
way to recognize progress (what should we measure to know we’ve moved the
needle). The performance of a plan in meeting its objectives must be evaluated
and taken forward as a major input into further planning cycles. The
objective should be to ensure sustainable improvements to service coverage and
standards for managing all recovered resources. Strategic planning offers the
opportunity to deliver sustainable improvements to local waste management practices
because it can respond to the ever changing waste and recovered materials
markets.
#3. Take
a Collaborative Approach
Public-Private Partnerships for Service Delivery (PPPSD) is
one of the proven approaches to resource management planning. The main objective
of the program is to promote sustainable, self-supporting partnerships between
businesses and local governments to support the formation and operation of new
enterprise-municipal co-operation in solid waste management and recycling
systems.
The main goal of the program is to stimulate improved
co-operation between public, private and citizen stakeholders that: contributes
to sustainable improvement of recycling and solid waste management; minimizes
negative effects of waste in poor communities; and improves the lives and
livelihoods of people and enterprises in cities and rural communities.
#4. Avoid
the Scenic Route to the Landfill
Diversion from landfills has become a major driver for many
resource management plans and recycling programs, with some states and
municipalities even operating under legislative requirements for achieving
specific diversion goals. However, when poorly sorted materials are counted as
“diverted” from local landfills, but end up landfilled by manufacturers because
they are not usable, they simply made a longer trip to the Landfill.
Verifying the fate of materials recovered from municipal recycling programs is
critical to determining the actual diversion rate. Recycling programs should
know the quantity of materials were usable in the production of recyclable
products.
In order to ensure an optimally functioning whole recycling
system, local governments must provide for recycling services that sustain all
parts of the cycle, not just collection. Local governments must specify
collection, processing and marketing requirements in their requests for
services and in their local ordinances for hauler and recovery service
providers. Throughout the planning and implementation for resource management
programs, stakeholder input and feedback is critical and must include the
manufacturing end markets for recovered resources.
Ultimately, the goal of recycling programs should be to
maximize the recyclability of all its materials.