Great Ways to Reduce your Office Waste

Waste is a hot topic at the moment, with many of us concerned with the large amount of material being sent to landfills. Try our top tips to cut office waste (with the added bonus of saving your business money).

1. Use both sides of paper: When printing or using a photocopier, its very simple to change the settings to print on both sides of the page. This will reduce your overall paper consumption by about 50%.
2. Follow the labels at our recycling station and make sure your trash is put in the right bin.
3. Reuse packing envelopes and parcels. Whenever you receive a package, don’t just take the contents out and throw them away. Have a place to store the empty packets, apply labels, and use them to send out items to clients.
4. Only print if really necessary. Be strict with yourselves and your staff, make sure you only print items if you need to show someone away from the computer.
5. Check your margins. Standard Word settings leave a huge margin and seriously reduce the amount of printable space per page. Reducing the setting means that less paper will be needed to print the same amount of information.
6. Ditch the post-it notes. Why buy expensive coloured paper when you could reuse scrap paper to do the same job?
7. Use reusable cups and mugs. Encourage your teams to use mugs and glasses, even when getting takeaway coffee. Not bringing paper cups into the office will reduce your waste dramatically.
8. Use your printer settings effectively. If you print something for the office using the ‘fast’ or ‘draft’ settings, it uses a considerably lower amount of ink.
9. Encourage staff to bring in lunch rather than going out and buying a pre-packaged sandwich. This will again seriously reduce the amount of cardboard you waste.
10. Use one pen at a time. This will make your pen last longer, pens dry up quicker when they are used and left to stand. If you make sure you only use one at a time, it will last significantly longer.
11. Pre-cycle your supplies. Choose your supplies based upon the ease of recycling the packaging it come in. This means when you finish it you know it is easy to recycle and won’t go in the trash.
12. Use electronic formats and apps for note taking rather than a pad and pen. When in meetings, consider taking notes on your tablet, PC or smartphone, for example.
13. Cut down on packaging waste. If you are sending out lots of parcels, consider shredding documents you no longer need and using the scraps as packaging instead of plastic or polystyrene chips.
14. Make your staff aware of their waste and consider offering a prize for the staff Member who reduces their bin usage the most.
15. Remove personal bins from under staff Member’s desks. This means staff will be more likely to use recycling facilities provided rather than simply go for the closest, quickest and most convenient option.
16. Run a recycling awareness day. Teach your team what recycling efforts you are making and how they can help. Explain to them why it is a positive benefit to the business.
17. Recycle organic waste. It’s genuinely surprising how much office waste can be composted. Things like tea bags, coffee grounds, and food waste can all be composted instead of thrown in the general waste.
18. Avoid colour printing. Wherever possible, print documents in black and white, as it uses a lot less ink and uses way fewer credits for your printing.
19. Store staff manuals and policies online, this way, they are easily accessible and you don’t waste lots of paper when printing them.
20. Ensure you recycle any old electronics. Almost all computer items can be recycled.
21. Spend more when buying new equipment. If you invest well in office equipment, you will need to replace it less often.
22. Use our filtered water. Instead of buying bottled water.