Eliminate Waste in Your Company – For Good
With the rising costs of waste disposal coupled with increasingly green aspirations of customers, Zero Waste has become a way of life and an attractive business objective. This refers to a philosophy that combines strategies, tools, and resources to completely eliminate waste instead of simply managing it with landfills. More than merely recycling and reusing, it also involves the restructuring of production and distribution in order to prevent and eradicate waste.
Here, we examine some of the benefits of being a Zero Waste business, as well as specific steps to take to achieve this goal.
Why be a Zero Waste Business?
Zero Waste is a vital part of climate action plans and directly benefits the natural environment. Every year, landfills pollute both surface and groundwater, emitting up to 70 million tonnes of methane, which is a hazardous greenhouse gas that traps heat in our atmosphere. Going zero waste will significantly reduce the amount of methane produced.
Furthermore, this movement is potentially very cost-effective for businesses. Firstly, it reduces the costs of waste management and disposal. In addition, having a Zero Waste model demonstrates your organisation’s commitment towards the environment. This not only helps portray an environmentally conscious and ethical brand image but also builds trust with customers and partners, who will be more likely to engage with your business. Eliminating waste can also lower costs and optimise the material flow in your organisation, giving you an edge over your competitors and impacting your bottom line.
Exemplifying the benefits of being a Zero Waste business is Subaru, a company known for its commitment to Zero Waste. About 96% of Subaru vehicle parts can be recycled and reused, and their two manufacturing plants in Japan and one in the United States have not sent waste to landfills for the past 12 years. Apart from benefiting the environment, Subaru’s Zero Waste methodology has helped their bottom line, seeing $1-2 million savings annually after implementing Zero Waste in their US plant.
Steps to Becoming a Zero Waste Business
Achieving Zero Waste requires specific strategies to start your business on the journey to eliminating waste. The following are some effective steps you could take:
1. Conduct Waste Audits
Auditing your current waste generation, management and disposal is an important first step to working towards eliminating waste in your business. The analysis will glean data on the sources, types, and volumes of trash being generated, as well as capture quantitative and qualitative data to identify opportunities for recycling and create a baseline to track progress.
This assessment is imperative in helping businesses recognise specific ways to eradicate waste. Take New Belgium Brewing for example – a leader in the zero waste brewing world, they conducted an actual waste audit of more than 500 waste collection points in its facility, which enabled their employees to come up with repurposing options for waste materials.
2. Set up a Zero Waste Committee
Yet another essential component to a Zero Waste plan is having a special cross-functional team responsible for setting specific goals to reduce waste, coming up with a plan of implementation, and monitoring progress. This enhances communication and commitment within the organisation, and proves to be an efficient way of achieving zero waste goals.
3. Engage your Employees
Business objectives cannot only involve the management but also requires the cooperation of employees in following policies and strategies. Together with raising employee awareness of waste management, key strategies on the journey to Zero Waste include providing training and incentives to reduce waste. These could include a working from home policy as well as commuting incentives to encourage the use of public transport, benefits which Microsoft uses in their effort to make greener choices.
4. Waste Prevention and Reduction Strategies
Once you have analysed waste generation in your company, set up a committee and spread the word of Zero Waste. It is crucial to come up with a specific action plan to work towards your goal of abolishing waste.
Look into ways to reduce your carbon footprint. Make use of green energy providers and environmentally conscious brands. For instance, Canon’s range of solutions can greatly reduce paper wastage and operational costs. Our range of hardware solutions, such as our imageCLASS printers, provides automatic duplex printing and sleep mode, lowering materials wastage and power consumption. Software solutions like the ThereforeTM Document Management System digitises documents and also help eradicate paper wastage. Your business could even take part in Canon’s Cartridge Recycling Initiative by returning empty Canon cartridges to be recycled when placing new orders.
Putting in place these specific goals and strategies will go a long way towards achieving Zero Waste. Eliminating waste in your company for good may be an arduous journey, but will ultimately reap great rewards for your company and employees through bottom line savings and helping the environment.
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