Introducing Selective Sorting of Waste Management

Why Set Up Selective Sorting Your Trash?

The first obvious reason is, of course, the protection of the environment: by carrying out selective sorting, your company encourages all its employees to sort the waste, it is a kind of precursor of the recycling chain, and thus promotes sustainable development. Sorted trash can be transformed into secondary raw materials.

Selective sorting also helps to mobilize employees. The human aspect is essential in a company: all members must feel integrated and engaged. As such, appointing sporting ambassadors or waste managers seems essential to strengthen cohesion within your company. These new responsibilities may allow some employees to find a motivation they could have lost, by actively involving them in these new “environmental tasks”.

Beyond the human aspect, sorting can save your business money. For this, a waste management policy must be implemented. It will then be enough to value all the waste, before turning it into raw materials. This low-cost solution will create value: these raw materials will be used to cover transportation and disposal costs.

Sorting your garbage means participating in job creation. In the early 2000s, it was thought that recycling was utopian and impracticable: in terms of waste management, it was preferred to burn the waste or leave it in the open air. Today, the situation has changed: recycling has become unavoidable; six out of ten packages are recycled. And this should increase further in the years to come. Thanks to these new practices, jobs are constantly being created, and the recycling market is becoming increasingly important.

Image Source: Global Trash Solutions

Business Waste Management Policy

The regulatory framework is changing strongly today, and the law on energy transition is pushing companies to become more interested in the treatment of their waste: collection, sorting, and recovery of waste, issues that have emerged in recent years and are of concern more and more companies.

Here’s how to simply manage waste in your business. No specific technique is needed, it is worth asking the right questions!

Mapping Business Waste:

An inventory promises to be essential to manage your waste:

Find all sources from which they come: office, workshop, etc.
Identify their type: paper, cardboard, plastic, etc.
Evaluate their volume
Measure their degree of danger
Estimate their recyclability

With this first step, you will be able to easily map the different types of waste present in your company. Then, you will establish an action plan to treat them in the short term. Learn about the rules, techniques, and services of waste treatment.

You will need to find out about the following:

Regulatory constraints: laws, provisions, etc.
Disposal techniques (storage, collection, recovery, etc.) adapted to each type of waste
Existing services to manage waste: identify services already in place by public authorities or private companies, and obtain a price range.

Sensitize Staff to Waste Management:

To reduce and manage your waste optimally, your company must involve all its employees, so that everyone feels committed to this task. They will have to feel involved, valued, and aware that what they do in the name of sorting will contribute to the development of the company.

Reduce Waste Production at the Source

The storage, collection, and recovery of waste are very expensive for your company. To reduce these “avoidable” costs, following the waste management strategy we must go directly to the source of the problem, reducing the amount of this waste. To do this, an awareness of good practices to adopt is essential to limit the consumption of products that generate waste. A simple practice is to use as scrap paper a sheet that has only been printed on one side.

Sort or Store Waste in Business

Sorting and storing your waste will allow you to recover them later, both internally (reuse or recycling) and externally, via appropriate organizations. This waste must be sorted and stored as soon as it is produced, to facilitate the process.

Have Your Garbage Collected

This is the next step in the treatment of your waste. To do this, two solutions are available to you: to appeal to public or private organizations, to see what suits you best! Often, when your waste is produced in too small quantities, organizations refuse to collect it. In this case, do not panic! The simplest way is to pool your waste with those of companies in your area.

Make Your Waste More Valuable

The Environmental Code of waste management requires you to value your packaging waste. They should be recycled for other types of waste for any other disposal practice, if technically and economically feasible.

Organize a Waste Tracking

To manage your waste most optimally, organizing your follow-up is necessary. For information, the regulations require the keeping of a register, ready to be presented on request to the authorities, for many categories of waste: hazardous waste, packaging, etc.

waste management

Image Source: Amazon.com

Mistakes to Avoid in waste management strategy?

Selective sorting has now become a task in its own right, and to sort your waste, you will have to avoid making the most frequent mistakes:

Your mug is cracked, and you think directly to put it in the tray for the glass? No, do not do that! Indeed, dishes and perfume bottles have different chemical compositions of glass. Thus, they do not melt at the same temperature. You will put your mug in the garbage bin.

Do not put your waste papers, plastics, or metals in a garbage bag

Do you think you are doing a good job by putting all your garbage in a garbage bag? Know that it is useless! The garbage packed in a garbage bag will not be processed on the sorting line, and even worse, the whole bin will be refused!

Do not pack your packages into each other

Although you love Russian dolls, do not sort your garbage the same way! For example, putting a plastic bottle in a tin can only make it more difficult for them to be processed at the sorting center.

Do not rip your papers into a thousand pieces

You wrote a beautiful text, but you realized that it was completely off-topic? It’s pretty frustrating, but do not shred your paper into a thousand pieces! Papers that are too small may not fit on the sorting line.

How to Make Your Employees Aware of Sorting?

Recycling is today a major concern in more and more households, and that’s good! This awareness must be valid both at home and in the workplace. And here are some techniques to make your employees aware of selective sorting, so that they feel involved and valued in the tasks they perform:

How to use each sorting basket?

This is the obvious starting point. Sorting errors are not uncommon, so it is essential to give all the necessary information to your employees: where does each waste go? Is it recyclable or not?

The waste collected, what do they become?

When your waste has been collected, they leave for new horizons. And of course, it’s an emotional moment, like an employee leaving the company. But where are they going? How are they recycled? It is important to inform your employees, in a fun way for example, in the form of quizzes or tests!

Recycling, what impacts the preservation of the environment?

“Yes it’s great, I recycled, but what’s the point? To answer the questions of your employees, it is advisable to enlighten them on their good action: so yes, the recycling made it possible to save money, but thanks to the action of all your employees, it especially contributed to the preservation of the environment!

Solidarity jobs generated through selective sorting

It is important to let your employees know that they have created hundreds of jobs in the recycling and environmental protection sectors thanks to their involvement in selective sorting.

Communicating through different media

To make your employees more aware of everyday life, choose mass communication on the subject of recycling, via different media: posters, stickers, company newspapers, e-mailing, etc.

trash-can-reviews

How to Choose Your Recycling Bins?

Do you want to make your company aware of waste management? Your ecological and responsible approach is very appreciable, and in most cases starts with the introduction of sorting. Today, we make this gesture often at home, but in the workplace, it becomes rarer. So once this desire comes to achieve selective sorting in your company, you hesitate on the type of trash to choose: outer containers, trash collector, or simple office basket, here are the 3 questions you need to ask yourself before doing your choice:

Where Will It Be Installed?

Yes, know that this question is essential! Just like product placement in a supermarket, the placement of the trash is essential. Everything is a matter of volume, material, and processing waste. Placing individual baskets in each office will not require a lot of space, while a collective garbage bin in a hallway or dedicated room will have to be large enough to accommodate the waste of all your employees. As for containers placed outside your company, it will be necessary to take into account the main material of your waste: indeed, this material will have to be resistant to the various bad weather (rain, snow, heat, wind, etc).

By Whom Will It Be Used?

Before making your choice, it is necessary to estimate the number of people likely to use the trash. Indeed, if it is small daily volumes, office baskets will be more suitable. On the other hand, if a large amount of waste is used every day in your company, use large bins in the corridors, available to all your employees. An important element to take into account: the frequency of passage of cleaning agents! If they do not pass daily, then it will be necessary to provide bins large enough for a certain time.

What Waste Will be Collected and Sorted?

No simpler paper, plastic sorting! In most companies, the needs are more sophisticated. But do not panic! Today there is a trash can for every type of waste: ink cartridges, goblets, organic waste, batteries, cans, cigarettes, recycling has never been easier.

Image Source: Amazon.com

The Different Sorting Trash Cans:

Office Baskets

Often reserved for individual use, they offer simple sorting, for small volumes (15 to 30 liters). Office baskets are generally used for sorting paper and plastic or metal.

Containers for Collective Use

Often in a business, there are untapped collective spaces: in the lobby, in the cafeteria, in a meeting room, in corridors, and so on. So why not place in these places bins for collective use, to optimize the space? They are generally used to collect papers, newspapers, plastics, metal, cardboard, glasses, and other waste. These containers, which can in most cases contain up to 150 liters, are often very practical because they contain playful pictographs and are understandable by everyone, ideal to educate all employees to recycle.

Outdoor Trash Cans

Choosing an outdoor bin needs to be vigilant on certain points, especially the choice of material: indeed, it must be strong enough to withstand climatic hazards. In addition, the trash must have a robust attachment system, so it does not fly away at the first gust of wind!

Specific Bins (Collectors of Cigarettes, Cups, Batteries)

Today there is a bin for each waste. Here are the main specific collectors found in the majority of companies:

Plastic Cup Collectors

Positioned strategically close to coffee machines or water fountains, they can collect tens or even hundreds of cups used every day in your company. Most modern collectors have a sleek design, allowing employees to be visible while blending into the mass of the interior decor.

Cigarette Collectors

No more cigarette butts thrown to the ground in the different terraces of your company! These collectors, often taking the form of a small column, interfere perfectly in the landscape, and allow collecting waste easily.

What is the Color Codes of Waste Management?

Yellow trash, green trash, blue trash, One day we all hesitated on where to throw away waste. To help you understand once and for all that the different colors of the bins correspond to, here is a simple explanation, like that, no more excuses being wrong!

The Green Trash Can: We put in this trash glass (incredible!). Note that there should be no plugs or covers on objects you throw away.

The Yellow Trash Can: This bin is more generous, it accepts plastic, cardboard, and paper. In this one, you can leave the caps of the plastic bottles, or even better, realize your good action of the day by giving them to a charitable association.

The Blue Trash Can: We talked about it just before! More rarely, it collects papers, newspaper directories, flyers, etc.

The Gray or Black Trash Can: The so-called classic bin, for waste that is not suitable in other colors.

Waste bins for specific waste

Batteries: direction special containers, present today everywhere, especially in shopping centers and supermarkets.

Medications: These “care” wastes must be reported in pharmacies.

Multimedia devices (computers, televisions, etc) will have to be brought back in special containers, present in specialized stores.

Green Waste: This is all the waste from the garden. Most town halls make big bags available to collect them.

Bulky Waste: unbelievable, two solutions are available to you, the dump or bulky (each municipality has days of collection of this waste; it is up to you to inform you).

With all these elements, I think you could easily get a 20/20 if there was tomorrow a question about the colors of garbage sorting!

Image Source: GYRETEC MOLDING COMPANY, INC.