Businesses across the South East are being encouraged to take part in a day long experiment to determine how reducing everyday waste could impact on efficiency and profitability. Tuesday 21st February 2006 has been named One Bin Day as part of an Envirowise initiative that will see firms urged to restrict the availability of office bins for the day.
South East regional manager, Katie Plummer, explains: “Businesses throw away a staggering quantity of unnecessary waste every year. In our experience a lot of office waste in particular is thrown in the bin because, for busy office workers, the bin is often the quickest and most convenient place to ‘file’ unwanted items from paper to plastic cups.
“Unfortunately, very few firms realise just how costly this habit of convenience can be, in both financial and environmental terms. We hope that participating in One Bin Day will help firms to reassess these wasteful habits and understand the benefits of changing their ways.”
On One Bin Day participating firms will be asked to remove from the office all but one bin. This will have two effects:
- It will remove the convenience of having a bin next to every desk, so staff will have to think about the way they deal with unwanted items, rather than simply dropping them into their own personal bins without a second thought.
- Secondly if staff stick to their normal routine, a single bin will quickly become full and overflow, creating a very visual illustration of the level of waste being generated on a daily basis.
The potential benefits of cutting down on waste are huge – especially when you consider that many businesses spend up to 4% of their turnover generating waste. Office waste, especially paper, will be an obvious focus on One Bin Day, and with good reason:
- An estimated 3.1 billion sheets of paper are used every month by office workers across the South East - enough to reach the moon and back laid end-to-end.
- Paper usage is rising UK-wide by around 20% every year.
- The average office worker uses approximately 50 sheets of paper every day.
However, according to Katie Plummer, waste paper is only a small part of the problem: “Whilst cutting down on paper use in offices is a very important aim, and central to our objectives for One Bin Day, paper use really is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to business waste.
Industrial and commercial businesses across the UK create around 75 million tonnes of waste every year.
“I would encourage firms to use One Bin Day as a starting point to look at waste in all areas. I think many will be surprised at what they find, and at the savings they can make.”
A free online savings calculator available from Envirowise at www.maximiseprofit.org.uk allows office-based businesses to simply input a few basic details to reveal what sort of savings they could make on costs such as paper, ink, waste disposal, water, heating and transport. The website also includes information on how to arrange a free, confidential visit (Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales only) from an Envirowise expert to help identify low cost, high value solutions and help get a resource efficiency programme started.
For more information visit www.envirowise.gov.uk or call 0800 585 794
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Issued on behalf of Envirowise by Harrison Cowley. Media Contacts: Kate Sturley or Rod Dennis at Harrison Cowley (0117 929 2311 / roderickd@harrisoncowley.com)
About Envirowise
Envirowise delivers a valuable programme of confidential advice to UK businesses. This advice enables businesses to improve profitability and reduce environmental impact.
Independent, practical and proven guidance is available through the Envirowise Advice Line, information resources and on site visits (Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales only) delivered by a national team of expert advisors. Each solution is driven by the specific needs of individual firms to genuinely improve their business practices, profitability and competitiveness. Since 1994, Envirowise has helped UK industry save over £1 billion.
The Envirowise programme is available to any UK business, completely free of charge. For more information visit www.envirowise.gov.uk or call 0800 585 794.