In April 2016, landfill tax reached £84.40 per tonne. Apart from the direct cost, complying with the wide array of environmental regulations makes dealing with commercial waste even more expensive. So learning how to use your resources more efficiently and reducing waste is something that can help save your business a significant amount of money.
With that thought in mind, here’s our guide to effective waste management and the associated cost-saving benefits.
Reducing Waste in Your Business
If you have only just begun to think about how your business can reduce waste, it’s best to start small and build from there. This way, you can begin introducing structured tasks into your business’ processes that will help you work towards a culture of waste reduction – rather than just disposal.
To help get you underway, here are some waste reduction ideas for three common types of businesses: offices, restaurants and manufacturing.
In Your Office
Did you know that printer ink is one of the most expensive liquids in the world? As such, simple rules designed to reduce ink wastage are a great idea. For example, programming printers to print in black and white rather than colour, and encouraging your employees to view documents on their desktop as much as possible, can save your business a considerable amount of money.
Recycling one tonne of paper saves approximately 682.5 gallons of oil, 26,500 litres of water and 17 trees. Recycling paper in your office can also save you money. Reusing envelopes and incoming packaging, and converting pieces of scrap paper into notepaper, are all tactics used widely by ‘green-thinking’ offices.
In Your Restaurant
The UK’s Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) released a Too Good to Waste report that estimated restaurants could save more than £2,000 a year by reducing food wastage by 20%. Preparing food only when it’s ordered and regularly monitoring use-by dates are both processes you can introduce to help manage food waste better.
In relation to reducing packaging waste, there are several simple changes you can make. For instance, you can request that your suppliers package all your stock in recyclable materials. Or, if you have a takeaway restaurant, you can make an effort not to over-package the food that leaves your shop.
In Your Manufacturing Business
For manufacturing companies, the inefficient use of raw materials and waste disposal costs between 5 and 10% of total turnover. Faced with this statistic, the cost-saving potential of more effective waste management for manufacturing businesses is obvious.
Taking a ‘buy only what you need’ approach to stock control and procurement can save you money on purchasing unneeded materials. Equally, reviewing your business processes to ensure all equipment and materials are being used as efficiently as possible is a great way to keep costs down.
Your Legal Responsibilities as a Business
All businesses are legally responsible for managing their own waste. If you’re a business owner, the restrictions on what you can – and cannot – send to landfill are often stricter than for residential waste.
What’s more, you can face financial penalties if you do not handle waste according to legislation, or if you don’t have the right paperwork in place before it leaves your premises.
If you would like further information on waste legislation and regulations for businesses, take a look at this government guidance.
Final Thoughts
The amount of money you can save through effective waste management will differ from business to business. However, if there are currently deficiencies in your business’ waste management strategy, there are considerable savings that can be made.
If you’re hoping to make your business more efficient, Simply-Docs can help. We have a wide selection of customisable ready-to-use documents that will enable you to protect your business, while managing your legal and compliance requirements.
You can browse through our complete range of documents by clicking here. Or to speak to one of our staff about how we can help your business keep up with legislation – contact us today.