While it’s important that we look at our own personal plastic use, it’s also important for our work places to keep an eye on their plastic use as well. Particularly when a business will go though a lot more plastic every year than any individual household would.
Yet this is more than just helping keep plastics out of our oceans or away from landfills, using too much plastic can also cost your business more money than you would think. So, by reducing your plastic, you can save yourself money and raise public perception of your business by being eco-friendly.
Keen to get started? Well, here is Kwiksweep’s guide to reducing plastic in a business:
1: Audit Your Plastic Use.
Before you can reduce your plastic use, it’s important to know where and how your company uses single-use plastic. As, otherwise, you will find it very hard to cut that plastic use down. To make this easy on yourself, simply send an email around your employees asking them what single use plastics they use every week.
Then, once you have a list, you can start to look at ways to replace these plastics with something more eco-friendly and re-useable. Even just a small change can make a big difference over the year for your business.
2: Get in Touch with Your Suppliers.
Generally, a lot of plastic comes from the suppliers we use. Which is why it’s a good idea to contact these suppliers yourself and ask them about whether your goods can be sent with less plastic and more eco-friendly alternatives.
If this cannot be done, you could always consider using different suppliers in the future that would be willing to use less plastic.
3: Provide a Kitchen.
If your employees don’t have somewhere to make their own lunch, they will likely head to a local lunch takeaway where a lot of plastic will be brought back to your offices and disposed of in your bins.
By providing items like a fridge, kettle, microwave and toaster, your employees will be more likely to bring in food from home to reheat. Not only does this mean less plastic, it means employees spend less time out the office and are generally happier – making or a more productive workforce.
4: Provide Eco-Friendly Drinks.
From water to tea and coffee – drinks make for a lot of plastic use. Just take the milk used in coffee and tea, where you use endless plastic containers. Instead, arrange for a local company to deliver your milk in glass bottles that will be reused. The same goes for your tea and coffee – make sure that you are opting for brands that don’t use plastic in their products.
By providing a filtered water cooler, you will also help encourage employees to not use plastic water bottles and instead use a refillable bottle and the cooler system too.
These might seem like a few small changes to make, but over time you will notice far less plastics in your recycling bins. Plus, if you want to keep yourself as eco-friendly as possible, contact green-friendly recycling businesses such as Kwiksweep for any office clearances you might need or for when you’d like to dispose of old machinery in a way that’s best for the environment.
