How to reduce and manage your waste

You can cut your business costs and reduce the environmental impact or your activities by reducing the amount of waste you produce. Therefore, the need to dispose of the waste is reduced. The true waste costs to the business can be 10 times the cost of disposal.

Reducing your waste saves you money on:

• waste disposal
• the initial purchase price of goods
• costs associated to staff time
• storage 
• transport

How you manage your resources (for example, food purchasing, cooking, stationery and so on) can all lead to the production of waste. By keeping a regular eye on the contents of your bins you can identify the potential for avoiding such waste in the first place. For instance:

• is there overstocking of food, materials or products? 
• are they out of date? 
• does there have to be so much packaging? 
• could you bulk buy to reduce packaging and costs?

There are 5 key steps to minimising the waste from your business. Follow the simple steps below and click on the links to the left for more detailed information:

• monitor your waste
• reduce your waste
• how to choose a recycling service contractor
• dealing with hazardous substances in a safe and legal manner
• preventing pollution