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5 Steps To Improve Your Company's Recycling Processes


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Businesses across all sectors must strive to improve their sustainability efforts in order to thrive and succeed. Recycling is one of the simplest ways to become a greener business, reduce waste, and protect the planet. To improve the recycling processes within your organization, consider these five steps.

1 . Perform a waste audit

To improve your company’s recycling processes it’s advisable to perform a waste audit of your current system. A waste audit can help your company to assess the effectiveness of your existing waste management systems. A waste audit seeks to help you achieve recycling targets and gain more value from your waste. By choosing a waste management partener you can work towards improving your waste segregation and waste prevention. It’s only by identifying your weak points that you’ll be in a position to improve.

2. Dispose of E Waste correctly 

It’s particularly important that E Waste is disposed of properly. Electronic items contain toxic substances, which could harm the environment or the public. E waste is usually disposed of using either ‘demanufacturing’ or shredding’ techniques. Demanufacturing involves dismantling the items, these parts may eventually be re-used. Shredding involves loading the items into shredding machines, and recovering as much value as possible. Both methods are carried out by licensed technicians. In the USA there are twenty-five states which follow E Waste recycling laws. To learn more about these regulations, you can take a look at the National Center for Electronics Recycling website.

3. Use metal recycling services 

Most businesses are accustomed to recycling and reusing plastic and cardboard items, yet it’s also important to recycle metal. Recycling metal helps to save resources; reduce pollution; minimize the destruction of the environment; and reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill. Metal waste such as steel scrap is certainly not just another form of trash. Scrap metal can be reused to make plenty of things including bridges, buildings, appliances and cars. You can melt and reshape metal as many times as you like. Metal recycling uses up less energy compared to producing new metal.

4.  Set goals


To improve your recycling processes, it’s useful to set goals to reduce waste for your company. A few of your goals might include:


  • Reduce your paper and cardboard waste by 50% in the next two months.

  • Use lean management software to improve your understanding of waste.

  • Reduce the cost of waste for your company by 10%.

  • Eliminate single use products from your organization.

  • Reduce wasted water by fitting eco-taps and using water saving apps (like Drop Counter).

5. Keep on learning


To make improvements going, the best thing to do is keep on learning. Read up on the latest sustainability initiatives and recycling practices. There are several online resources which can be helpful including:


Sustainable Business Magazine: This magazine focuses on themes of sustainable business development. Here you’ll find plenty of info about business sustainability, policy news, technologies, new projects, and events.

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