Do you have quick wins of your own?
Submitted by Debbi.Christophers on Fri, 22/02/2008 - 15:42.
Let us know about any actions you've taken to reduce your environmental impact in the workplace.
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Waste segregation
Not a quick win but a relatively easy way to win is to separate only food waste from your waste stream. (Nothing is worse for segregation by staff into all sorts of different bins than finding out later it all goes back into the same compactor or dustcart).
Many waste carriers now deal with MRF's - gigantic factories for separating waste at destination so you don't have to separate it at source; they have clever machines to do it as well as people. There are several MRF's around London - Strattford, Rainham, Luton etc. Many now take glass as well.
What this lead for us to was a three bin system (although it could be only two if it wasn't for the volume of confidential waste):
1. All paper can go in confidential bins regardless of whether it is confidential or not. This is taken by Lime.
2. All food waste is taken by the charity East London Community Recycling Partnership (ELCRP). It's put into lined bins which are sprayed with a non toxic biological spray to prevent putrefaction. These can then be stored in the loading bay. They're regularly picked up and turned into compost via a machine operated by the charity in Hackney. This provides local employment and very good quality compost and liquid feed for allotment holders (it takes only 14 days to complete one cycle of the machine).
3. All remaining waste goes into a third big bin and is taken away by S2SS and segregated at the MRF.
We do still have collections for other waste types that we segregate. But for the office, "food", "paper" and "mixed other" were the fewest waste streams we could have and still get a high recycling quotient.
Now all we have to do is get rid of at desk bins!
www.freshfields.com/csr