Waste minimisation for increased sustainability
Waste minimisation means cutting waste within your business. It can be a really effective way to increase your profits, and you'll also be doing your bit for the environment.
Cutting waste is not just turning off lightbulbs or fixing leaky taps. It's reducing production, use or disposal of anything that isn't reused or sold by your business.
Recycling, important though it is, isn't waste minimisation. Waste minimisation is all about reducing waste at source - not creating it in the first place. Waste can be designed out to enhance your sustainability.
Make less. What you don't make, you don't need to recycle.
No matter how big or small your business is you can still make a real difference. Every business produces waste, and every business can cut it.
Effectively minimising your waste means looking at the whole of your business - from what you buy from suppliers, to manufacturing, right through to waste disposal.
Your waste is your responsibility from when it is produced to its final disposal and it is a minimum requirement to make sure the waste you produce on-site is not disposed of illegally.
Why minimise waste?
There are many business and environmental reasons for minimising waste including:
- Waste minimisation reduces your costs.
- Many waste minimisation measures cost nothing, but yield big results.
- Customers increasingly favour environmentally friendly companies.
- More and more businesses demand resource efficiency from their suppliers and partners.
- Legislation is forcing us all to address the issue of waste. Non compliance means fines or even prosecution.
Now you've decided to minimise your waste and improve your sustainability, you have to ensure all staff are in support of the new initiatives and this means effectively managing the change.
