Campaigners are taking a giant rubbish bin to the streets of London today to highlight how much waste is generated in offices around the UK in a single day.
Envirowise, a government-funded group that advises business on sustainability, said bad waste practices are costing UK industry at least £15bn each year.
Today’s One Bin Day campaign marks an effort to illustrate the problem and to prompt office works to rethink the way they use materials and handle waste.
The group is parading a giant, two-and-a-half metre high waste paper bin around the capital – made from the 1,584 sheets of paper that the average office worker prints off in a month – and urging the nation’s 25 million office workers to use just one bin per office.
“One Bin Day is designed to make people think about what they buy, use and throw away,” said Envirowise programme director, Martin Gibson.
“Much of what we discard can be reduced or recycled, but the convenience of a bin right by your desk makes for a big temptation to throw away valuable resources.”
Envirowise wants offices to remove individual desk bins and force workers to walk to just one central bin.
“The visual impact can be staggering,” Gibson said. “If workers follow their normal practices, the central bin will soon be overflowing within a matter of hours. This will help focus attention on just how much is used and thrown away daily. Once people start thinking about how they use things, they often think of how to reduce the amount they use, and improve the reuse and recycling of what is left.”
Earlier today the giant bin was on London Bridge, and will later move to office commuter hotspots such as Liverpool Street and Victoria stations.
Envirowise says that approximately 70% of office waste is recyclable, but on average only 7.5% reaches a recycling facility. Some 80.6m tonnes of printing and writing paper enters the waste stream each year in the UK – 24% of total UK waste, figures show.
Recycling one tonne of paper can save 7,000 gallons of water. It also saves 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, and 4,000 kilowatts of energy. The average office worker uses 50 sheets of paper a day in unnecessary printing, figures show.
At 17.7%, Britain has one of the lowest recycling rates in Europe for the 335m tonnes of solid waste it produces each year.
Food waste accounts for one-fifth of all waste nationally, while Britons throw away 12bn aluminium cans and 6bn bottles a year, Envirowise said.
Waste from households, commerce and industry continues to grow by 3% a year. To help address this the group has put together a publication for offices that want to find out more about reducing waste, at envirowise.gov.uk.
Their tips include:
• Set the office printer to print on both sides of the paper by default.
• Use electronic communication where possible to reduce printing and faxing.
• Don’t print out emails unless absolutely necessary. Add “Think before you print” to the bottom of email signatures as a prompt to others.
• Avoid over-production of marketing and publicity material by reviewing distribution lists and regularly updating databases.
• Collect all paper that has been printed on one side and reuse it for printing in draft, or for scrap message pads.
• Reuse envelopes wherever possible, especially for sending information internally.
• Place recycling bins in all offices.
• Ensure that vending machines allow the use of china mugs rather than plastic vending cups.
• Avoid purchasing disposable catering products such as milk jiggers, sugar sachets and paper plates.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) tested the use of one central bin in its estates division last year. It provided recycling bins for paper, cans and glass, and a communal lidded bin for waste going to landfill in an office of 30 staff.
“The campaign has been so successful at cutting waste and increasing environmental awareness that all new staff are briefed on how the scheme operates; we now only use transparent bin bags so we can be more aware of the waste we produce instead of hiding it in black bin bags; and we’re extending the one bin provision to other departments at the LSE,” said Victoria Hands, the college’s environmental and sustainability manager.
0 comments for this entry ↓
There are no comments yet for this entry.
Leave a Comment