Many employees struggle to comply with the recycling procedures at work, yet we all recycle at home! The good news is Albany Cleaning Solutions can help you spot the weakness in your waste streams, recommend recycling systems to suit your offices and simplify things by making office recycling clear and straightforward while supporting your sustainability targets.
Here are some ideas to encourage recycling at work.
- Plan Office Recycling Bin Locations
How accessible are the recycling bins at your office? It may be a surprise to find that your containers are in the wrong location, are hard to access by some employees, or are confusing because there are no helpful signs nearby. Do a quick survey of your office recycling bin locations to ensure you have them placed correctly.
There are many ways to optimise the placement of your office recycling bins, but don’t just change to any location; ask your employees what they think. After all, the more input they have now, the more likely they will use the bins in the future.
- Ensure you have enough recycling bin locations to support the number of staff in your office.
- Your recycling bins should be visible and easy to access in prominent locations.
- Centralised bin locations often help staff recycle more.
- Group all bins and separate them by materials.
- Apply clear signage. (It is likely that items should be separated differently at work than at the employees’ homes since every council has their own policies)
- Communicate waste/recycling locations to your staff.
- Reduce Paper Waste
When you think of your average workplace, you think of paper, printing, memos, and binders. However, mindlessly printing anything and everything needs to change. Your new office paper recycling push should encourage your employees to digitalise their communications as much as possible.
Paper recycling supports carbon sequestration and reduces climate change, so it has an impact.
Ways to encourage more sustainable use of paper in your office can include:
- Use recycled paper and print on both sides.
- Create an office policy that discourages printing unless necessary, and put up some friendly reminder signs.
- Educate your employees on the social, economic and environmental impact of paper use.
- Run Weekly Recycling Challenges
To get better results from your team, make recycling a challenge. Not just any challenge, but one that has real benefits if they win! Recognise their participation, and your employees will support your sustainability goals.
You could run weekly recycling challenges with a desirable reward. Studies have suggested that friendly competition at work can motivate employees to achieve more and put in more effort where it counts.
Rewards and competitions could include:
- Leaving early, working from home, free lunches, special perks
- Create levels of recognition – inter-departmental & consecutive wins
- Imagine if every week, the top recycler in every department gets cakes (in recyclable packaging) from the worst recycler.
When there’s an attainable prize at the end of the week, your employees are likely to inspire each other to do better for you and the environment. These small acts of recognition work exceptionally well, and employees feel fulfilled when you acknowledge them for doing something meaningful.
Creating and encouraging a culture of recycling in your office is not always easy but is necessary, and taking some simple steps can make a real improvement in your employees’ participation. If you need more assistance with improving your recycling practices to support your sustainability targets, get in touch with us on Cardiff: 029 2048 7538, Bristol: 0117 325 4538 or Swansea: 01792 722 538
