When it comes to office cleaning, London based facilities managers can fall into the trap of focussing on how clean an office is only once the cleaning operatives have finished their work. Although cleanliness is obviously an important part of any cleaning contract you might take up, the way in which recycling is handled is becoming ever more crucial. The following points are steps you can take in order to reduce your office wastage.
- Most office waste consists of paper. The first action you can take to reduce paper is to set up your printer to print double sided, as this simple action can halve paper consumption.
- The second step is to ask yourself if what you are printing really needs to be printed, because most of the time we print things that can simply be written down by hand on an already used bit of paper.
- Bins: Business in London now mainly organise their waste into colour coded bins. Black bines are designated as those which contain material destined for a landfill sight, green bins are used for plastic recycling and blue bins are used to holed paper for recycling. By making your office aware of these colour codes, you will help to encourage them to recycle.
- Paper reduction strategies offer a great opportunity to reduce waste, but there are other pieces of office equipment that we use on a daily basis that can be reduced, reused or recycled, rather than thrown away.
- Items such as stationery, toners, cardboard, furniture and IT equipment can all be explored in terms of consumption, and then you can prepare a recycling strategy to dispose or reuse them in an environmentally friendly manner.
- Get rid of personal bins at desks and encourage staff to use the bins that allow for separated waste
- Send out an email campaign that boasts all of the benefits of office recycling and write it in such a way that your staff will respect your company’s behavioural change and will support the decision.
- Green strategies: Many office boardrooms discuss the need to be greener nowadays as part of the corporate and social responsibility (CSR) policies. However, in order to meet all of the latest regulations, best practices and environmental law, you need an organisation that can recycle and clean for you which is up to date with all of these regulatory restrictions. The minimum standard to look out for in terms of fulfilling your CSR is a firm that is ISO 14001 certified. Processes for continual assessment and improvement in recycling practices are another good thing to ask about, too, when considering a new contractor.
If you’d like additional professional advice with no obligation, contact Green Facilities, a UK- based cleaning company headquartered in London. We offer cleaning consultancy, cleaning audits, contracted commercial cleaning services and one-off deep cleans. We take pride in delivering tailored cleaning solutions to fit your unique needs.
