Plastic waste is one of the world’s most prevalent pollutants. It is estimated that, globally, we produce over 300 million tonnes of plastic every year. It’s important that we all work together to reduce the amount of plastic waste that ends up in landfills or polluting our environment. Businesses who commit to plastic waste reduction and environmental initiatives are found to be viewed in a higher regard publicly, and many environmental initiatives are tax deductible! Here are a few tips to reduce plastic waste!
1. Perform a Plastics Audit
A good first step to plastic reduction is taking stock of the actual plastic being consumed in your business. Plastic audits mean figuring out what kind of plastic is being thrown away. This may seem a little gross, but it’s an important step to identifying how much plastic is being thrown in the trash. If you’d rather not perform a plastics audit, don’t worry! [Re] Waste will perform a plastics audit for you!
2. Eliminate Unnecessary Single Use Plastics
There are a lot of ways you can eliminate single use plastics. Things like changing from disposable to reusable coffee cups and encouraging people to use a water fountain versus bottled water. If your business sells goods, you can switch to recycled plastic packaging and encourage customers to bring their own reusable bags and containers.
3. Educate Your Staff and Customers
An important step to plastic waste reduction is education. Put together a simple program to ensure your staff understand how trash should be disposed of, what is and is not recyclable, and how they can reduce their single use plastics. You can also create educational materials for your customers, encouraging them to reduce their plastic waste both when interacting with your business and in the rest of their lives.
4. Incentivize Reduced Plastic Waste
Following education, incentives are a simple way to get everyone involved on board with plastic waste reduction. You can try company wide incentives to get your entire team working together to track how much plastic is being thrown away. Set trackable goals, and if they are met you can reward your employees with something fun, gift certificates, an afternoon off, or any other kind of reward. Creating incentives for customers can be more difficult, but there are plenty of ways to encourage customers to reduce their plastic waste. Things like providing a discount for bringing in their own bags, cups, packaging, etc. can encourage customers to reduce their plastic, and plastic-take back programs are a fantastic incentive! You can also incentivize by installing a penalty, as found in many grocery stores that now charge for bags.
5. Create an Initiative
Sometimes the most important step to reducing plastic waste is to put it in writing. Creating an initiative is a great way to hold your entire company accountable and ensure that you are doing everything you can to stick to your waste reduction goals.
6. Set Up a Plastic Return Model
As environmental initiatives become mandated, a lot of municipalities are heading towards an Extended Producer Responsibility model when it comes to waste. Setting up a plastic return model would have consumers pay a deposit on the plastic products they acquire from you, which would then be returned when they bring the plastic back to you. This will allow you to collect more plastic products and ensure they are disposed of properly.
7. Work with [Re] Waste
[Re] Waste is a Canadian company that can help you significantly reduce the amount of plastic a company creates. We create customized programs to work with companies and collect their plastic waste. We then use these plastic collections to remanufacture the plastic into usable products. We can manufacture almost any kind of plastic product, from combs and bowls to shelving and wall protection. If you’re looking for a personalized solution to your plastic waste, contact [Re] Waste!
Plastic waste reduction is an important part of making sure that we create a better environment for the future, and waste reduction for businesses is just as, if not more, important as it is for households and municipalities. [Re] Waste is committed to helping businesses decrease their plastic waste and increase the use of recycled plastic for a better tomorrow!
