Rethink Rubbish At Work

Most of us spend a large part of our waking lives at work, but for all the useful stuff we churn out, we unfortunately produce mountains of rubbish too.

By law, all businesses have to make proper arrangements to dispose of their rubbish, which usually involves paying a waste management company or the local council to provide containers and empty them on a regular basis. A charge is normally made for commercial waste collection, so it's in the interests of businesses to try and reduce the amount of rubbish that needs taking away.

Putting rubbish at the top of the business agenda
Research by Envirowise has found that rubbish can cost UK businesses up to 4.5 percent of their annual turnover, so it really is in a company's interests to rethink its rubbish. It's easy to cut down the amount of rubbish we create at work without increasing our workloads or causing more stress! There are a number of effective steps we can take:

• choose durable over disposable items
• recycle - for example, paper, empty drink cans, toner cartridges, etc
• buy products that are made from recycled materials, such as recycled paper or stationery
• try not to create as much rubbish in the first place!

We all complain about too much paperwork, but with so much paper thrown away by British offices each year there are really simple things to do that will dramatically reduce this huge amount. Photocopying double-sided, will immediately reduce paperwork by half!

Most offices now have e-mail which means less paper for memos, letters and faxes. And if you do have scrap paper, why not use it to feed the fax machine, or for writing notes or printing internal copies.

And by buying products made from recycled materials such as paper and stationery will help to encourage a healthy marketplace for recycled goods which is vital for long term stability.

Source: www.recycledproducts.org.uk

Environment Friendly Office Products

Glues
Pritt Stick and similar products are solvent free. Traditional Sellotape is biodegradable

Paperlok
Fastens together pages without using staples.

Pens
Refillable pens, xylene-free marker pens, waterbased (i.e. solvent-free), biodegradable and those with barrels made from recycled material.

Snopake
A solvent-free non-toxic correcting fluid.

Solar Calculators
Widely available, it means never needing to buy another calculator battery.

Recycled products
There is a wide range of recycled products available, apart from office paper. These include:
Ring binders, box files, clipboards, expanding files, fax rolls, filing products, flip charts, computer labels, typewriter labels, lever arch files, machine rolls, notepads, record cards, bankers boxes, suspension files, 'post-its', all types of envelopes and 'jiffy' bags.

see why recycle? and our recycled business gifts & recycled promotional products

Recycled paper products
Recycled desktop products
Recycled pens