We live in a plastic world. Whilst it’s extraordinarily useful and versatile, we must do more to tackle its prevalence.
There are an estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic waste going into the world’s oceans each year, and we are all responsible.
As the world has woken up to the impact of plastic consumption, businesses and government bodies have acted quickly to ensure they remain on the right side of public opinion.
In light of Recycle Week, we’ve put together 10 ways to make your business plastic-free.
- Conduct a waste audit to uncover how much waste your business is producing. These results will provide a baseline to measure change as well as highlighting the biggest areas for improvement.
- Engage with key internal and external stakeholders on issues central to your business to ensure your plans are integrated, practical, yet ambitious.
- Find innovative ways to engage your employees and bring your policies to life. It’s also integral to keep your employees updated on the changes.
- Your employees will play a vital role in reducing the use of plastic. Make sure they know how important they are as part of this movement.
- Publish an environmental social responsibility statement online, including a section which details how your business will be approaching dealing with waste.
- Encourage minimal packaging and maximise reuse or recycling potential of necessary packaging throughout the supply chain.
- Within the office, encourage refill water bottles, coffee cups and plastic-free lunches.
- Order the list of goals into the easiest things to tackle and then look at it in terms of the most effective changes. For example, 38 million plastic drinks bottles are bought every day in the UK. Taking the decision not to sell them would make a huge positive impact.
- Check out the credentials of alternatives. There will be some things you will need to find a replacement for.
- Learn more. Research the best options for your business to help dispel any myths, for example, that going plastic-free will be bad for business.
