The epidemic of plastic pollution in our oceans is frightening.
Roughly 75% of all marine pollution is plastic. And unfortunately, a sizeable portion of this plastic originates from commercial sources, such as our offices.
Plastic water bottles, cups, bags and food containers can easily find their way into the ocean from our businesses, through improper disposal.
Plastic that ends up in landfill can easily be blown away and washed into drains or rivers, where it then makes its way into the sea. Rainwater carries litter into our drain systems, and then on into the ocean.
By reducing our use of plastic and recycling correctly, we can greatly reduce the chance of this happening.
Here are some ways to reduce your office’s impact on our oceans.
Offer Reusable Water Bottles
Your staff
need to stay hydrated while working.
However, they don’t need to use single use plastic bottles or cups to carry their water.
By encouraging staff to purchase reusable water bottles, your workers will ultimately be saving themselves money, as well as the environment.
For example, if a worker purchased a bottle of water per day, switching to a reusable bottle would save roughly 260 bottles per year!
That could be as much as $800 that your staff member isn’t spending on plastic water bottles.
If you want to go a step further, you could offer company branded reusable water bottles to your staff at a reasonable price.
The money your business brings in from this program could then be invested in your recycling schemes.
Encourage Staff to Bring Homemade Lunches
Encouraging your staff to bring homemade lunches reduces the prevalence of single use plastic containers.
You could even connect with local shops to come up with a scheme where reusable containers are provided and then returned to the food shops each day.
This eliminates the plastic waste, yet allows your team to keep visiting their favourite lunch spots for a takeaway.
Create a Waste Management Team
Delegating the waste management plan to a team in your office can have a great impact on the effectiveness of your recycling program, and doesn’t take a lot of time or effort.
A waste management team can help maintain focus on your recycling program. A group of dedicated individuals can organise your recycling bins, make sure items are being reused where possible and educate other staff on recycling plastic.
This will ensure your plastic use is as minimal and responsible as possible.
Hire an Office Rubbish Removal Contractor
It’s not just bottles, cups and so on that make up the plastic waste in your office.
Larger items like chairs, desks and cabinets can also end up in the ocean in fragments. When incorrectly disposed of and broken down, there’s just as much risk of this plastic ending up in the waterways as other items.
A professional commercial waste contractor can remove these larger items from your office and ensure that it is all disposed of correctly and expertly.
Sydney City Rubbish is an office rubbish removal company ready to work with you on your recycling goals.
