Page 21 - st1_flip

Three quarters of businesses have some form of offce recycling system, but, according to Bill Swan, managing director of Paper Round, one third of these are doing it wrong. This means that about half of UK businesses are failing to recycle as much waste as they could.

He points out that businesses that have not yet implemented a recycling scheme are wasting money. “Three quarters of waste is easily recycled. At the moment if a business is not recycling it will be paying someone to remove the material as waste when they could be saving money by recycling, as recycling charges are invariably cheaper than removing materials as waste,” he said.

Recycling companies should be able to take away waste paper, shredded paper, cans, plastics, batteries, CDs, IT equipment and glass. The sorts of things they generally can’t collect include OHP flm, carrier bags, laminated materials, dirty tissues and contaminated plastics, such as food packaging.

People who expect their waste to be collected free of charge on the basis that the waste has some resale value will be disappointed, as collection costs outweigh the waste’s resale value. The only exception is waste paper, which Paper Round can afford to collect free of charge due to a high resale value and low volume to weight ratio.

Implementation

Implementing a recycling process is extremely straightforward. Swan advises businesses to start with a paper recycling scheme, as this is a quick and easy way to demonstrate the value of recycling, before adding other materials, such as cans and plastics. The frst step is to create a network of recycling bins around the offce and advertise the scheme to employees. You will then need to fnd someone to collect your waste at suitable intervals. This is likely to be a specialist provider, as with very few exceptions, councils don’t offer commercial recycling services.

There are essentially two types of recycling service offered by providers: separated, where there are separate bags for different types of waste, or co-mingled, where all non-food waste is collected in one container and separated on a conveyor belt at the recycling plant.

Separated vs. co-mingled

Separated schemes are still the most common type of scheme, though co-mingled options (like those enjoyed by many households) have become more popular in recent years, particularly in very large organisations where the facilities team want a quick win. There is great debate in the recycling industry about which is the best type of scheme. Proponents of co-mingled services argue that they encourage higher recycling rates,

“Paper from offces is very high grade,” Swan explained. “Unlike newspapers and magazines, white offce paper can be made back into copier-grade paper. But it must be kept separate from food residues and moisture as that will cause fbres to rot so that they can’t be recycled; and it must be kept clear of glass, because if glass breaks, fne shards will stick to the paper and damage the recycling machinery.”

He argues that offces and households recycle different types of material, so a collection scheme that works for domestic rubbish may not be suitable for commercial waste. “Co-mingled schemes were started for households that have smaller quantities of material.Waste material is mixed and they have lower grades of paper (newspaper and magazines) and a lot of glass and plastics. So the arguments for co-mingled and source separated are more balanced in that area. But in a commercial situation where you have an offce producing good quality paper or a restaurant producing large quantities of good quality glass, it is criminal to mix one with the other.”

A third option is to have a partially co-mingled scheme where recyclables are separated into two categories, e.g. one for paper and one for glass, plastics and cans.

Once you have decided on the type of scheme and collection intervals required, and satisfed yourself that your provider is recycling material in a responsible manner (i.e. not just shipping it overseas), it is important to keep monitoring the scheme.

Do it right

Implementing an offce recycling scheme could not be easier, so why are one in two businesses either not doing it or doing it wrong? James Goulding reports