Establishing A Recycling Program For Your Small Manufacturing Business
Adhering to mandatory municipal recycling guidelines helps to decrease the amount of waste that ends up in local landfills. However, if you own a small business that uses raw materials such as sheet metal to manufacture goods, you can minimize the impact your business has on the environment even further by implementing a recycling program. The following guide provides the basic steps on how to increase your recycling efforts in the workplace.
Designate a Recycling Team
When your business has more than a few employees, you should designate a leader to coordinate your recycling efforts. If you have several departments, you can recruit someone from each section to participate in a recycling team initiative. The team will devise, implement and monitor your company-wide recycling program.
It is important to provide the team with managerial support, adequate resources and encouragement so they can be successful in their efforts.
Perform an Audit of Waste
One of the first tasks the recycling team should perform is conducting an audit of the amount of waste generated by your company. This includes determining how much materials you throw away during the manufacturing process. You may be surprised to find out how much valuable metals are discarded and what can be salvaged.
Metals that you should recycle include:
- Aluminum
- Brass
- Copper
- Nickel
- Platinum
- Stainless steel
- Zinc
With the information gathered from the audit, you can uncover wasteful practices and identify ways to improve company-wide recycling.
Educate Employees
Even though you designated a team to oversee waste reduction efforts, you should reach out to all employees to educate them on how to improve workplace recycling. You can hold a company meeting, send out informational emails and hang up posters that remind employees on how to handle and dispose of materials such as scrap metal, old pallets and plastics.
In addition, encourage employees to submit their waste reduction ideas and feedback to the recycling team. You can also reiterate your commitment to recycling and waste reduction by including a statement about company efforts in the corporate policy manual.
Establish a Relationship With a Recycling Firm
If you generate large amounts of manufacturing waste, you should establish a relationship with a reputable recycling firm, like Federal Metals Inc, that can provide regular pickups of odd-shaped and large items such as large metal pipes.
Recycling companies provide bins and roll-off containers in various sizes for collecting manufacturing waste. You do not have to worry about sorting through mounds of metal, plastics and other materials. The recycling firm will organize the waste, separating the different types of materials for processing.
Once the materials reach the recycling facility, the metals and other products are shredded, melted and purified for reuse. If you typically generate a large amount of metal waste, recycling firms will pay you for the scrap metal based on current market prices.
In addition, if you are moving to another facility, you can hire a recycling firm to pick up the materials that you leave behind including old equipment, appliances, electronics and metals.
Purchase Recycled Raw Materials
Many suppliers of raw materials provide recycled products to customers. Some recycled metals, especially steel, provide the same quality as newly mined raw materials. The recycling firm that picks up your waste may also sell recycled metal and industrial surplus metals. Furthermore, many recycled metal suppliers offer online inventories of their items.
While it may take many hours to plan and launch, establishing a recycling program will have long-term positive benefits. You can help to reduce the amount of materials that go to incinerators and dumping grounds. Plus, you can add to your bottom line by selling metal waste that can be repurposed and resold.
