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Waste management is the process of treating solid waste created by your business and finding a variety of solutions to help reduce the amount of trash that is produced. Business owners and operations managers alike should work together on waste management. Not only will it help the environment, but it may also help improve efficiency and reduce disposal costs. If you are an operations manager, here are some helpful tips to bring to the table when having a business discussion on your company’s waste management strategy.
Develop A Plan
Creating a waste management plan for your company is essential. This is where you can outline the policies and procedures for disposing of certain types of waste. Additionally, you can identify what items should be recycled, what can be reused, and any other way that your employees can help with the change. A waste management plan will be the perfect resources for everyone involved.
Perform An Audit
The next thing that you should do if you are hoping to implement a waste management plan is to perform an audit. A waste audit will help you understand exactly how much waste your business is dealing with. Once you have an idea of the areas in which you are the most wasteful, you can begin taking steps to reduce your trash output. If one department seems to be creating a lot of waste, you can then work with those employees to come up with a financially savvy solution. A proper waste audit will be an excellent tool as you move forward.
Go Paperless
Another tip for any business that wants to reduce their garbage is to go paperless. This is a simple solution that almost every business can easily enact today. Instead of printing those employee contracts, have them digitally signed. Using phones, computers and other digital mediums to communicate will help to keep the amount of paper you thrown out at an all time low. Emails and voice messages work just as well as paper notes, and they can all easily be saved to the cloud or a USB device. Secondly, this will also save your business space by forcing you to develop a digital filing system.
Increase Recyclables
The best way to reduce waste for your business is to increase the amount of recyclable materials that you use. Recyclable items help to improve your sustainability practices with ease. You can easily practice paper recycling in your business. This can be easily incorporated into various parts of products or services. Try reaching out to your current providers to see if they offer recycled options. If not, you can surely find a business that does.
Optimize Equipment
The next best thing you can do to improve your business’s waste management is to optimize your equipment. Renting instead of buying heavy machinery can save you the trouble of disposing of these types of things later on. Furthermore, keeping your equipment in optimal working order can help reduce the amount of business energy that is used during your operations. Even little changes like rechargeable batteries can make a big impact on your company’s waste.
Assign Roles For Managing Waste
Using your waste management plan, business owners need to assign personnel to follow the instructions. You can divide the waste reduction activities into teams, individuals or third party contractors. Whatever actions that your business needs to take to reduce recycling should be clearly assigned. This way, everyone at the company can be held accountable for reducing the environmental impact of the business. Certainly, sharing the responsibilities of managing waste removal and reduction helps the company meet its project goals.
Waste management is an essential process for any business. If you are looking to make improvements to your business, consider following these tips above. Increasing the amount of recyclables you use and going paperless can drastically change the amount of waste you produce.
