How to Implement a Sustainable Waste Management Plan for Your Small Business

Many small firms see waste as an unpreventable expense and do little to cut the cost of rubbish disposal. Costs go up and up, but it's seen as a fixed price. Waste is actually a very variable cost and it's often one you can control quite easily. It's just a question of understanding what you're paying for and taking a little bit of time to look at the alternatives.

Start With a Waste Audit

Before making any changes, you need to understand what you are producing in the first place. This is as straightforward as spending a week or so collecting and categorizing your business waste. Cardboard, food, plastics, general landfill, hazardous materials. It was simple. But most small operators don't bother, so they're flying blind.

The audit will generally identify one or two dominant waste streams that weren't immediately obvious. A food business, for example, might find that packaging from incoming supplies actually dwarfs the waste from product. For an office, printer consumables and single-use plastics may be the big ticket items. Once you know where you're at, you can act.

This is where the old waste hierarchy comes in handy. Prevention is at the top, if you can avoid it coming through the door in the first place, everything else is easier to deal with. Reuse is next. Then recycling and recovery. Disposal is the last resort, not the starting point.

Work the Problem Upstream

The most efficient waste reduction doesn't occur at the bin, it happens before anything arrives. Re-engage suppliers, strip out secondary packaging, request returnable pallets or crates and consolidate deliveries. All of these moves reduce incoming waste before your team even touches it.

This is the "take-make-dispose" to circular economy shift. And small businesses can play in the circular economy without rebuilding their entire operation. Just ask your suppliers what take-backs they currently offer. Most will have a scheme, few customers ever asked about it.

According to WRAP, businesses can save 4-5% of annual turnover through waste prevention and resource efficiency measures. Working with a westminster waste partner can help you identify exactly where those savings sit. That's not a marginal gain for most small businesses, it's a biggie.

Get Your Team Involved Properly

Poor separation at the waste disposal stage causes most sustainability projects to fail. If people don't know what goes where because the labels are bad, recycling contamination rates rise. They rise not out of any malice or unwillingness to do the right thing, they rise because of simple ignorance that could have been easily prevented if the signage was just better.

If you can see a normal waste bin when you're standing at a recycling station, you're going to assume that bin is for what you have in your hand. If it isn't immediately clear if something is recyclable, you'll make a guess, and most people guess 'yes' just to be safe. And you can't rely on people to read even the clearest signs if they are right in their line of sight. People don't read at waste stations.

What you sort at your desk also might not be what your cleaning staff sort, so this needs regularly checked and communicated. And contamination rates aren't something most cleaning companies track so you might be in for a shock if you ask.

Right-Size Your Collection Before Adding New Bins

A frequent error we make is viewing sustainability in an additive way, new bins, new streams, new processes are added on top of the current ones. Instead of scaling up, take a look at what you are currently spending on and see if it's in line with what you are producing.

Many small businesses tend to overpay for waste collection, as they have not evaluated bin sizes or collection frequencies since their establishment. A Pay-As-You-Throw state of mind, meaning that you should base collection on actual volume rather than the highest possible level, generally reduces the costs and at the same time encourages waste reduction.

In addition, properly sizing your collection also helps you understand more clearly what you are sending where, which becomes important as you begin to promote environmental responsibility within your business.

Choose a Waste Partner That Can Back Your Claims

As a responsible business, you already know you have a Duty of Care. It's also more important than ever to be able to record exactly what happens to your waste for increasing stakeholder pressure on transparency. 59% of senior executives consider "the increasing sector focus on environmental issues" as a key driver for their organization to take action on a sustainability strategy. A professional waste partner should help you gather that data more easily, not make you question whether they're providing accurate data in the first place.

Choosing a professional waste partner you can trust also means you cut down on your own organization's time and resource drain. Time spent researching suppliers, onboarding, and monitoring each supplier consistently up to standard is all time you have to evaluate versus getting it right the first time with just one. Your Legal, Compliance, Procurement, Sustainability, and Facilities teams have enough to do with their direct responsibilities without also having to become waste specialists on the side.

Treat This as Resource Management, Not Rubbish Removal

The companies leading the charge in reducing waste are not necessarily those with the most aggressive goals. They are the organizations that view waste as a resource stream, and track, measure, and search for opportunities to extract value from the stream before it heads out the door.

This type of transformation doesn't happen overnight, yet the initial step is just dedicating one week to truly observing what you are discarding.