Recycling is the key to managing office waste

Whether you’re a small office with half a dozen staff or a major corporate with hundreds of employees, one thing all businesses have in common is the need to manage the removal and recycling of waste.

From batteries to light bulbs, cardboard to confidential documents, plastics to printer cartridges, there’s a never ending list of different items which have to disposed of in the most environmentally friendly and energy efficient way possible.

As experts in recycling and waste management solutions, Grundon Waste Management has the knowledge and expertise to help. Our team can provide practical and easy-to-use systems as well as tips, advice and information for facilities managers and employees in order to make managing waste simple.

Our team has years of experience in managing different types of waste and we can advise organisations on the do’s and don’ts of recycling, as well as looking at ways to optimise best practice while keeping costs down. Increasingly importantly, we can make businesses feel good about their commitment to the green agenda by helping them to reduce their carbon footprint.

Grundon’s approach to office waste starts when our experts undertake an audit of a company’s existing waste and recycling operations.

In most cases, the simple answer is to introduce a two-bin system – one container for mixed recycling items such as paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, glass bottles and cans; and another for general waste.

One increasingly popular option is to introduce strategically-placed corridor recycling boxes to replace under-desk waste bins, encouraging staff to deposit unwanted items directly into the larger containers.

Non-recyclable items such as some packaging and other plastics, go into the general waste bins, which are either sent for final disposal or, wherever practicable, to Grundon’s joint venture Lakeside Energy from Waste plant at Colnbrook near Slough.

There, non-recyclable, non-hazardous waste is incinerated, creating around 37 Megawatts of electricity, the vast majority of which – enough to power c.50,000 homes- is exported into the National Grid.

Grundon also offers a number of specialist services, including a secure on-site mobile shredding service for confidential documents, and the destruction of data and computer media such as hard drives and memory cards. For offices with staff canteens or larger numbers of employees, the company has recently introduced a dedicated food waste collection service, offering the potential to divert even more waste from landfill.

A separate Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) collection service ensures unwanted computer equipment and items such as computer monitors, telephones, florescent lighting tubes or televisions are disposed of in line with UK regulations.

And, in a further move to ensure environmental legislation compliance, Grundon has introduced the Haz-Box for companies to dispose of small amounts of hazardous waste. This includes batteries, contaminated rags, printer cartridges, aerosols and solvents, all of which, in a workplace environment, fall into the hazardous waste category.

Whatever a company’s waste management problems, we can provide a solution and our experts will be only too happy to talk to companies about their requirements. Click here for details of our standard recycling collection services.