6 Top Tips for Responsible Waste Management in the Office

Recycling and being environmentally friendly are suddenly very ‘in’ these days. Which makes us at Skip It pretty happy, because we’ve been banging on responsible waste management for years.

After the outcry about single use plastics following David Attenborough’s remarkable ‘Blue Planet II’ series, the government’s flash-in-the-pan environment warrior rebrand, and a whole rack of new proposals to address the climate change challenge – it’s safe to say that recycling is now all the rage.

In fact, we’d go so far as to say that green is the new black. So to help you get on board with the hot new trend, we’ve come up with six of our favourite ideas to make office life a little greener.

It’s a good idea to have somebody in the office who is responsible for the company’s green policies. This doesn’t necessarily have to be full time job; all you need is somebody who can carve out a few days a month to consider new environmentally friendly policies, pitch them to the management team, and review how well they’re working. You’d be surprised how successful having a singular reference point for this can be.

One of the problems with encouraging recycling is that most people won’t go all the way to the corner of the office to the communal recycling bin if there’s a perfectly good waste paper bin lying by their feet. While we’d like to live in a world where everybody’s happy to make that extra bit of effort to recycle more – the reality is that’s not currently the case.

So the best bet is to bring the recycling to you – and then watch as people start to use it more. Getting everybody their own personal recycling bin to go beside the waste paper bin will go a long way in encouraging more recycling.

Whether it’s reminding people to recycle more, or to turn electrical appliances off when they’re not being used – sometimes all people need is a gentle nudge in the right direction to get things right.

Putting up a sign is unlikely to convert the most die-hard anti-recycler, but it’ll serve as a helpful reminder for those whose hearts are in the right place but just sometimes have other things on their mind.

Everything from turning off radiators to competitive recycling ratios can be included in this. Create a target of 50 per cent recycling, and consider prizes for whoever has the highest recycling ratio. Why not consider implementing annual bonuses linked to how successful people have been at promoting environmentally friendly practices in the office? All of these are sure to get those recycling bins filled in no time.

It’s always good to have the whole team in the office. But do you necessarily need to have everybody there every day of the week? If you’ve got people who can just as easily work from home as work at their desk in the office, then encouraging this practice is a great way of reducing your company’s carbon footprint. Alternatively, if you’re trying to save carbon emissions on the morning commute, encourage car sharing for those people who do need to be in the office.

And here’s an extra free tip on us. At Skip It, over 90 per cent of the waste that we process gets diverted from landfill – much of it then going on to be recycled in one way or another. Ensuring you use Skip It for all your waste collection is a fantastic way of ensuring your waste goes on to a good place.