Recycling and Sustainable Waste Management is Changing be Smart Stay-Ahead or Lose

All businesses now need to plan for recycling and sustainable waste management like never before. Pressure is mounting to improve the way all businesses work.

Brexit has meant that all of the UK has to work smarter, and a large part of this starts by looking again at waste.

Those who don't keep up-to-date on waste risk the glare of negative publicity and being “found out” for wasteful practices.

Think of “ill-considered green hype” that no longer “washes” with the public.

Think about coffee-shop single-use plastic cups, for example, and how suggesting that those were “green” was pure greenwash and has hurt the coffee shop chains that tried it on!

We are sure that you have heard it said before:

“A business plan for recycling and sustainable waste management is a must for all of today’s organisations”.

O.K. We may be preaching to the converted. If so you should still read on because we firmly believe that most will need to up their waste management game very soon. (For now, it's all about recycling and sustainable waste management, later on, down the road to zero waste, all waste must be eliminated. (More on this later.)

If you have not recently reviewed your organisation's degree of participation in recycling and use of the latest waste management practices, then for your company's continued reputation and viability, we think that you should.

The Way Business Does Waste Management is About to Change Fast – and the Drivers for this are Multiple and Growing

If your company is simply doing “waste disposal,” it isn't going to be good enough. Businesses need to be proactively looking at ways to apply the “waste hierarchy.”

Those who look positively at such things are discovering how to work smarter, to avoid unnecessary costs bad publicity, and even shareholder investment withdrawals.

The “waste hierarchy” sets a set of priorities for sustainable waste management. It can be surprising how just applying this to a business can reveal new ways of designing products and processes that work far better, in the new economy of recycling, and circulating raw materials. Think of utilising materials in a manner in which they can be re-used numerous times before they are spent. That is recycling and sustainable waste management.

A New Cost-Penalty on Businesses that Don't Act Smart through Recycling and Sustainable Waste Management is Emerging

In a controversial move, States of Guernsey are set to introduce a ‘pay-as- you-throw’ (PAYT) system for residual waste collections in 2019. Starting next year, Guernsey parishes
will start charging for the collection of general waste, allowing the State to recover the subsequent processing and disposal costs. The payment system will use prepaid stickers
(the equivalent to using a postage stamp on a letter) to charge for each bag. The possible introduction of PAYT in the UK has been discussed, although there are concerns of public
opposition.

This system may or may not be introduced UK-wide, but charging directly for the waste left after recyclates have been removed, is bound to grow. Waste disposal charges are about to rapidly become much more focused on the individual's responsibility for waste generation.

Businesses will not escape this trend. The future is in recycling and sustainable waste management.

As time goes on, a business plan for recycling and waste management will make even more sense as it allows organisations to save time, effort, and costs in their daily operations.

Green actions, when used sensibly in company publicity, and not as “greenwash”, wins friends amongst both the public and shareholders.

Beware: Plastic Waste is Now Seen as a Public Enemy – Where Plastic Goes Other Wastes Will Follow

The UK government is under increasing pressure to reduce litter and tackle plastic waste. In December 2017, The Environmental Audit Committee published a report entitled ‘Plastic
Bottles: Turning Back the Plastic Tide’.

This report contains a series of recommendations, such as:

• Waste producers pay more for recycling
• Introducing a deposit return scheme
• Mandating the proportion of recycled materials in new products
• Implementing incentives for producers to design better products.

In addition, MPs recommend that the government adopt a producer responsibility compliance fee structure that would reward recyclable designs. It would encourage the use of recycled plastic, as “carrots”. While they suggest simultaneously, increasing the cost of products with packaging that is “hard to reuse” or recycle.

Tackling waste is a key priority for the government. Businesses in the UK should follow that lead, with a clear business plan for recycling and waste management. At its most basic, recycling and sustainable waste management is only the start. Soon we must stop thinking of “waste” at all, zero-waste is the goal for the nation and for all businesses. “Waste” must be substantially eliminated.

Will Planning Ahead for the Best Practise in Recycling and Sustainable Waste Management be a Budget Well-spent?

While it is appreciated that for SMEs finding time and money to devise smart solutions, is hard. Many SMEs have found that coming up with an innovative business plan for recycling and waste management provides a rare opportunity to rethink the business from the ground up. This can be a challenge, but professionals in waste management who have a detailed knowledge of outcomes, point out one recurring effect that they have witnessed.  They say that when these reviews are done with an open mind, these are the companies that prosper, and will still be around in 10 years.

Furthermore, using a consultant (like the guys at SmarterBusiness.co.uk) for your business waste reduction, recycling, recovery, and disposal can save both time and money.

By the way, although we have been talking about “waste” in this article, “smarter businesses” seldom even mention the word anymore…

After all, most of the time, with smart design and new processes, your “waste” can be someone else's “raw material”. Just consider SmarterBusiness' declared mission: “To provide a whole-of-market business comparison, maximize savings, and improve profitability.”

There's no mention of waste there is there? Why should there be? No. Think “minimise, reuse, recycle”!

Now we suggest that you scroll down further to consider the appalling wastefulness of which the public is becoming ever more intolerant.