How To Create an Effective Waste Reduction Plan

Waste reduction isn’t simply putting out recycling bins for your employee’s soda bottles—it’s a holistic organizational approach to reducing environmental impact. Soda bottles are representative of the “low hanging fruit,” but modern manufacturing facilities have many forms of waste to consider.

Understand and Follow ISO 14001 Standards

Every waste reduction plan must start by following ISO 14001 international standards. ISO 14001 is a sector of the ISO 14000 family, which are requirements for an environmental management system (EMS) that a business or organization can use to enhance its environmental impact.

Any business or organization is eligible for an ISO 14001 certificate as long as its procedures, product, or service continuously improves environmental performance. In addition, there’s no specific ISO 14001 waste management system standard that needs to be met; however, it must meet the international standard for environmental management.

There are many benefits of ISO 14001, including:

Waste, recycling, and consumption savings
A marketing advantage over competitors
Environmental regulation compliance
Presents a future-focused organization
Reduces insurance costs
And more

Closed Loop Recycling offers customized reporting for each client so they can achieve their ISO 14001 certification. Start your free trial program with us today so you can see how you’re creating a positive environmental impact!

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Remember These 11 Steps To Developing an Efficient Waste Management Plan

1. Create a Policy

Every great plan has to start somewhere. Adopting a policy demonstrates a visible commitment to sustainability from your company.

2. Set a Goal

What do you hope to achieve from your newfound waste management plan? Setting realistic goals makes your initiative much more attainable and effective in the long run.

3. Plan Your Initiative

Developing a plan for your green initiative is the first step to putting your policy and goals into action. Through this plan, you’ll have a step-by-step guide on how to achieve corporate sustainability.

4. Track Information

In this step, you’ll manage and track information. This includes regular reporting on tonnage amounts, program costs, savings, and more.

5. Train Staff

Training staff is one of the most significant components to ensuring that the plan is executed correctly. Each employee involved with the waste reduction plan is designated a role to ensure that everything goes according to plan. In addition, they’ll be provided a training schedule and staff motivational tools to further company morale.

6. Analyze Your Environmental Impact

Before putting your plan into action, it’s essential to perform a waste analysis to identify recyclable materials and current waste collection practices. This allows you to see where you started before implementing the waste reduction plan and how your initiative makes a positive environmental impact.

7. Designate a Space for Waste Collection

Your facility needs to designate spaces inside or outside the building for collecting all your company’s recyclable materials. This ensures that everyone knows where recyclable materials go when they are no longer in use.

8. Identify How Waste Will Be Handled

Next, you must identify how recyclable materials will be handled. This can include on-site collecting and processing or off-site transportation.

9. Identify Additional Actions To Reduce the Amount of Waste

In addition to your waste reduction plan, it’s essential to stay alert and identify additional opportunities for waste reduction. This could include reusing materials and being conscientious of purchasing decisions.

10. Budget and Layout a Timeline

In this stage, you’ll budget your financial resources and develop a sustainable timeline for plan implementation. The timeline should be attainable without too much time in between. An appropriate timeline assures that no part of the plan falls through the cracks.

11. Evaluate How You’re Improving Environmental Sustainability

Lastly, after your plan is put into action, it’s crucial to evaluate how your initiative improves the environment. This allows you to make adjustments to the plan as needed to achieve your initial goal. If your initial goal is not attainable, suggest a new goal for your sustainability efforts.

Why Is Reducing Waste in Business Important?

Reducing waste in business is essential for several reasons, including:

Protecting your company’s bottom line: Implementing recyclable products into your everyday processes cuts disposal costs.
Knowing how much waste your company produces: This allows your company to discover ways to reduce hauling costs and negotiate for waste and recycling services.
Streamlining reporting and sharing of information: Tracking your plan’s metrics makes it easier to share and report information with stakeholders.
Enhancing environmental sustainability: Tracking environmental aspects—such as waste, water, and energy—are the core components of sustainability. In addition, improving your business or company’s sustainability efforts can enhance your company’s image to current and potential customers.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions: A waste reduction plan offers significant potential for minimizing greenhouse gas emissions.
Conserving natural environmental resources: Reusing and recycling materials conserves the earth’s natural resources such as trees, metals, and water.

Reduce Waste Production With Closed Loop Recycling

At Closed Loop Recycling, we help businesses in industries like yours become more ISO 14001 compliant and build their waste reduction plan. We understand how significant it is to make adjustments to your company’s day-to-day processes, and we’re here to help you every step of the way.

We supply plants with industrial PPE laundering services and reusable oil absorbents for everyday use, complete with vendor managed laundering services on the back end. Our process is simple—we take your used materials, extract the fluids and recycle those fluids as asphalt, low-grade oil for heating, and fuel for cement kilns. After recycling the oil in your absorbents, we clean them through our laundering process and package them for redistribution. In addition, we provide you customized reports that state how much material you’ve laundered and how much waste you’ve diverted from landfills.

Ready to achieve and maintain corporate sustainability? Contact us today to get started!

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