Rethink Rubbish At Work

Spending a large part of our waking lives at work we can churn out a lot of useful things but we unfortunately produce mountains of rubbish too.

By law, all businesses have to make proper arrangements to dispose of their rubbish, which usually involves paying a waste management company or the local council to provide containers and empty them on a regular basis. A charge is normally made for commercial waste collection, so it’s in the financial interests of businesses to try and reduce the amount of rubbish that needs taking away – not just the environment.

Putting rubbish at the top of the business agenda Research by Envirowise has found that rubbish can cost UK businesses up to 4.5 percent of their annual turnover, so it really is in a company’s interests to rethink its rubbish. It’s easy to cut down the amount of rubbish we create at work without increasing our workloads or causing more stress!

 There are a number of effective steps we can take:

• choose durable over disposable items
• recycle – for example, paper, empty drink cans, toner cartridges, etc
• buy products that are made from recycled materials, such as recycled paper or stationery
• try not to create as much rubbish in the first place!

We all complain about too much paperwork, but with so much paper thrown away by British offices each year there are really simple things to do that will dramatically reduce this huge amount. Photocopying double-sided, immediately reduces paperwork by half!

In these modern times we have e-mail which means less paper can be used for memos, letters etc. And if you do have scrap paper, why not use it to feed the fax machine, or for writing notes or printing internal copies.

And by buying products made from recycled materials such as paper and stationery will help to encourage a healthy marketplace for recycled goods which is vital for long term sustainability.

Source: www.recycledproducts.org.uk

Environment Friendly Office Products

Glues Pritt Stick and similar products are solvent free. Traditional Sellotape is biodegradable

Paperlok Fastens together pages without using staples.

Pens Refillable pens, xylene-free marker pens, waterbased (i.e. solvent-free), biodegradable and those with barrels made from recycled material.

Snopake A solvent-free non-toxic correcting fluid.

Solar Calculators Widely available, it means never needing to buy another calculator battery.

Recycled products

There is a wide range of recycled products available, not just office paper. Made from various recycled items these include: Ring binders, box files, clipboards, expanding files, fax rolls, filing products, flip charts, computer labels, typewriter labels, lever arch files, machine rolls, notepads, record cards, bankers boxes, suspension files, ‘post-its’, all types of envelopes and ‘jiffy’ bags.