Waste management
Step one - Beginner
Before reducing waste, it’s essential to understand where waste comes from, and how much of it is being generated by your activities.
Mapping out waste sources can also highlight opportunities for cost savings through fewer waste collections, and potentially even generate revenue through repurposing your waste.
Before you begin, have a think about the different approaches to managing the waste within your organisation, and which one fits best for you.
- Sustainable Waste Management – minimising waste through careful planning, maximising reuse and recycling opportunities through material choices, and avoiding landfill where possible.
- Zero Waste – eliminating landfill waste by focusing entirely on reducing opportunities for waste, reusing items as much as possible, and recycling all materials.
- Circular Economy – reducing waste from your services to keep products and materials in use for as long as possible by promoting re-use, re-sell and repair schemes.
Types of Waste
Every business is different, and your waste may differ completely to another similar SME. This brings with it opportunities for repurposing waste – whilst you have used a material as much as you can, explore whether it could be passed on to others to make use of instead.
- General Waste – these are typically non-recyclable items.
- Recyclable Waste – items such as paper, cardboard, plastics and glass that can be reused again.
- Organic Waste – compostable waste such as food scraps and plant matter.
- Hazardous Waste – these items must be handled carefully, such as e-waste, chemicals and solvents, and batteries.
Why you should audit your waste
A waste audit helps to identify the types, sources and volumes of waste that exists in your business.
- Identify your main waste streams – packaging, food waste, office materials, electronic equipment.
- Track volumes of waste over a set time period – this can be over a week or a month, during a time period that is representative of your business operations.
- Review your waste disposal methods – does your waste go to landfill, recycling centres, can it be diverted to other waste disposal methods?
- Highlight your quick wins – such as reducing unnecessary packaging or optimising your stock levels to avoid spoilage.
Conducting a waste audit
Decide and record the areas of waste that you are going to review in your business. It’s common practice to measure your waste by weight, recording the data in either kilograms or tonnes.
Choose a period of time to measure the waste streams in your business. This should be at a time that is representative of your normal business conditions. You may decide to measure waste every day for one week, or once a week for a period of one month.
- Decide on the frequency and timing of your audit.
- List the materials that are in your waste streams.
- Weigh or count the waste items (estimate the weight if you are unable to weight it).
- Record your results, highlighting areas of interest such as what was the most common item, or if any of the waste you found could be repurposed, reused, or recycled.
If you are a larger organisation, your waste collection provider may be able to share a lot of this information with you.
Download our Waste Audit Template to help you get started.