Business Swap & Sell
How you can reduce your business waste
Business Link has produced a guide on how to save money by reducing waste. The guide will show you how to minimise the waste you produce in the course of your business processes and the methods that are available to reduce waste through design – e.g. packaging that can be reused or recycled.
"Businesses that take a strategic approach to minimising waste are likely to save the most money. Experience in the UK suggests that businesses across a range of industries can save 4-5 per cent of turnover by employing waste minimisation techniques."
Envirowise have produced a 42-page guide of 200 tips for reducing waste at source for assessing where your company stands with regard to waste minimisation. It draws on the combined experience of companies and consultants to give practical tips based on industry examples.
How can my business waste be reused?
Reuse of materials is the most sustainable way of treating your waste. The Eastex Material Exchange is an online tool, which works like a free online 'dating agency', matching businesses, organisations and individuals, allowing them to exchange their unwanted materials. It enables you to view or place adverts about redundant stock and surplus raw materials and then find a 'match', saving money and keeping useful materials in circulation and out of landfill.
The service is free to use, but access to some parts of the website requires registration.
The tool started life in Cambridgeshire and has already diverted nearly 4,000 tonnes of material from landfill and saved businesses over £400,000.
The Community Recycling Network website can help you find a community group that might benefit from your unwanted materials. They can sometimes also help to match businesses' waste with the community groups' needs. Please contact the Community Recycling Network directly on 01223 411494.
The National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), is an innovative business opportunity programme that delivers bottom line benefits for its members whilst generating positive outcomes for the environment and society. Put simply, their vision is to change the way business thinks. Operating at the forefront of industrial symbiosis thinking and practice, the programme helps companies take a fresh look at their resources.
Industrial symbiosis brings together companies from all business sectors with the aim of improving cross industry resource efficiency through the commercial trading of materials, energy and water and sharing assets, logistics and expertise.
