Recycling is a cornerstone of a more sustainable future. It helps reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. In today’s world, where environmental concerns are more pressing than ever, embracing sustainable solutions, such as recycling, is crucial.
With National Recycling Month a few months away in November, now is the perfect time for facility managers to reassess and revamp their facility’s recycling programs. Leading the change at your facility can help ensure that recycling is as efficient and effective as possible for all occupants.
Currently, between 75 and 199 million tons of plastic waste pollute Earth’s oceans. These plastics do not biodegrade but instead break down into microplastics. Microplastics persist in the environment for thousands of years, infiltrating marine organisms and drinking water. By recycling and reducing single-use plastic waste within your facility, you can help decrease the amount of plastic waste and microplastics in the environment.
Assess Your Current Recycling Program
Start by conducting a thorough review of your facility’s waste management practices and sustainability goals. Reputable organizations such as Green2Sustainable can perform a sustainability audit to help you gain a better understanding of how effective your current recycling program is. This audit analyzes your waste generation patterns and provides data to help pinpoint areas for improvement. Identifying weaknesses allows you to tailor your strategies to help create a more effective recycling program.
With a clear understanding of your program’s current state, the next step is to set measurable goals for improvement. These goals should be specific, attainable, and time-bound, such as increasing the recycling rate by a certain percentage within the next year or reducing contamination in recycling bins. Or, develop certain rewards for departments’ recycling efforts. Establishing clear objectives provides direction and benchmarks for tracking progress along with transparency. With 90% of consumers stating that they lose trust in a business when it lacks transparency, it’s more important than ever to be honest and open about your goals to retain consumer trust.
Educate Your Team
The key to a successful recycling program is education. One of the top reasons people do not recycle is because they feel they have a lack of knowledge. Hosting an employee training session or posting signage on best practices can help address this issue. Ensuring that everyone understands what proper recycling entails and why your facility is doing it is crucial for a successful recycling program.
Make Recycling Easy
To help make recycling more effective, use clear labeling on your recycling bins. These bins can be color-coded to help people quickly identify the correct bin for their waste. For example, blue bins for paper, green bins for organic waste, and yellow bins for plastics. One of the common challenges in recycling programs is contamination, which occurs when non-recyclable items are placed in recycling bins. Consider placing educational materials such as posters above the bins as a reminder of what can and cannot be recycled.
Additionally, placing your recycling bins in high-traffic areas and convenient locations such as near desks, break rooms, and facility entrances can help encourage more people to recycle. The easier it is for people to recycle, the more likely they are to do so.
Source Products from Sustainable Companies
When making purchases for your facility, consider ways you can reduce single-use plastics. Look for products, like cleaning tools, that are made from recycled plastic and textiles. To help ensure these products are high-quality and truly sustainable, look to see if they’re third-party certified by reputable organizations, such as Green Seal or ECOLOGO. These organizations perform thorough lifecycle assessments (LCAs) to ensure the product has minimal to no impact on the environment.
Recycling for the Future
Revamping your recycling program can help build a more sustainable future. By assessing your current environmental impact to identify areas for improvement, your business can start implementing achievable goals to help make your recycling program more effective. Seize the opportunity now to implement new strategies for recycling to help the planet.
