Having entered a greener era in a collective effort to reverse years of environmental damage from pollution, it’s positive to see many UK businesses looking for ways to improve their corporate responsibility and reduce carbon footprint by following a series of tactics, such as proper business waste management and increased recycling.
However, many businesses still don’t fully understand what happens to their waste after throwing it away and how they can ensure their recycling efforts are making an actual difference to the environment.
Understanding where your waste ends up and its journey, from the moment you throw it in the recycling bin to its final destination, empowers you to make more informed decisions and ensure your actions have a greater impact.
Understanding the Journey of Business Waste
The waste from your company’s facilities, after its disposal, can follow several potential paths: recycling, landfill, incineration, or, in unfortunate cases, littering.
Each option impacts the environment and your company sustainability goals differently.
Recycling
When waste is segregated correctly, is clean, and not contaminated, it can be recycled into new products or raw materials again, reducing the need for new raw materials, reducing carbon footprint and saving energy. This is the most sustainable path, but only when there’s no contamination.
Recycling Pros: Promotes a circular economy, reduces carbon footprint, and saves on disposal costs.
Recycling Cons: Initial investment in training and proper recycling infrastructure.
Landfill
Waste that is contaminated and not suitable for recycling often ends up in landfill, where it can take decades or even centuries to decompose. This option is harmful to the environment and expensive for businesses due to landfill taxes and increased disposal fees.
Landfill Pros: Effective for non-recyclable waste, modern landfills capture harmful gas emissions, making them safer than traditional landfills, and segregate hazardous material that could contaminate the recycling process.
Landfill Cons: Release harmful greenhouse gas emissions, take up too much space and land use, and pollute groundwater, affecting water sources and ecosystems.
Incineration
An increased amount of waste is incinerated, converting it into energy. While this process reduces the volume of trash, it releases harmful gases and contributes to carbon footprint.
Incineration Pros: Reduces waste volume, recovers energy, and is an alternative to landfills in areas with limited space.
Incinerations Cons: High setup and operating costs, release of trace amounts of pollutants affecting air quality, and permanent loss of potential recyclables.
Littering
Improper disposal of waste, such as littering, can lead to environmental pollution, harm local wildlife, and damage the reputation of your business.
Littering Pros: None.
Littering Cons: Environmental damage, high cleanup costs, and reputation risk.
Recycling is the clear winner for businesses looking to help our planet while decreasing their environmental impact and carbon footprint. However, recycling isn’t simple, as contaminated recycling is completely ineffective and a waste of time.
The Problem of Contaminated Waste in Recycling
Contamination is one of the biggest barriers to effective workspace recycling and sustainable waste management. Contamination happens when non-recyclable items/materials are mixed with recyclable materials or when items are not cleaned properly before being recycled (such as food waste or liquids).
For example, broken glass, food-soiled paper, plastic wrappers with leftover food, electronics, bottles with toxic liquids, or even items like plastic bags that aren’t accepted in traditional recycling streams.
When this happens, the contaminated materials are usually diverted to landfills or incineration, wasting the effort put into recycling and adding to your disposal costs.
But why can’t contaminated waste be recycled?
Increased costs: Sorting out contaminated materials is labor-intensive and expensive for recycling facilities.We’re talking about tons of recyclables..
Lower quality recycled products: Contamination can degrade the quality of the final recycled product, making it less viable for use.
Proper sorting and cleaning of recyclables before disposal is necessary to prevent contamination and ensure that your recycling efforts count. However, how can we make this feasible? Everything starts way before you dispose of an item.
How to Reduce Contamination and Improve Recycling in Your Business
Reducing contamination in recycling requires a combination of a proper waste management strategy, ongoing employee training on recycling engagement, clear communication, and a proper infrastructure in place.
Educate and train employees
Provide regular training sessions on what causes contamination and the impact it has on recycling efforts to empower staff and management alike to make better decisions and help in achieving your business’s sustainability targets.
The session can also cover tailored topics and can take place either in person, on your chosen space, or virtually.
Learn more about Workplace Recycling Engagement Training Sessions
Conduct regular waste audits and feedback
Audit your business’s waste regularly to identify regular contamination issues. Then, adjust your practices and provide targeted feedback to employees for a more mindful approach to recycling.
Upgrade your recycling bin infrastructure
Remove your old recycling bins that don’t engage proper recycling and upgrade with new, improved recycling stations to increase recycling engagement rates with clear signage options and colour coded waste streams with specific shaped apertures.
Discover our Used Bin Takeback & Recycling Service
Choose dedicated recycling stations
Invest in high-quality recycling stations tailored to your business needs. Our stations include compartments for different waste types, making it easier for employees to sort correctly and reduce contamination.
Choose the most suitable solution for your industry.
The Importance of Effective Recycling
Proper recycling helps to reduce the need for raw materials and lowers harmful greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide. It also benefits businesses by reducing disposal costs and potential fines for not complying with increasingly strict regulations.
Sustainable practices are a significant factor in boosting reputation, as more environmentally conscious customers will choose a green business over an outdated one that still uses harmful materials and engages in greenwashing practices.
Additionally, addressing Scope 3 emissions, which include indirect emissions from the entire supply chain, can significantly enhance a business’s sustainability profile and overall impact.
Without recycling, we would have to dedicate even more space on our planet to dumps and landfills. Common materials such as plastic, metal, glass, and paper are all recycled with varying levels of success. For instance, plastic is hard to recycle – according to OECD 91% of the worldwide plastic cannot be recycled and most ends up in landfills, where it piles up and slowly breaks down into dangerous microplastics. On the other hand, metal, glass, and paper generally fare better.
At Unisan, we understand the unique challenges businesses face when it comes to waste management. Our range of recycling bin stations and tailored training programmes make it easier for businesses to recycle effectively, reduce contamination, and improve their environmental impact.
Now that you are more aware of what journey your waste follows feel free to contact us for assistance in initiating or improving your recycling efforts.