IndustryNews
Waste legislation: changes you can’t ignore
Mike Taylor, MITIE’s waste and environmentalMD, explains the thinking behind waste legislation that can often be punitive, but which has good intentions. Staying onside is his main concern for clients.
Regulations
Every time we hold aMITIE client seminar on waste legislation, it’s packed out (especially the ones held at Manchester United’s ground!). Themajority of clients attending are our cleaning clients, which tells its own story. Clients re- sponsible for overseeing the cleaning of buildings realise that it’s no longer enough for large bin bags of paper, cardboard and even food waste to be sent to landfill fromtheir sites. It’s hard to believe that this was the normuntil a few years ago. As a society we have grown to realise that there’s only one planet for all of us (al- thoughmany nations’ oper- ations are based on the assumption that we have three or four planets to call upon). Legislation now plays an
important part in the world of waste and keeping your organisation compliant can be a difficult task in this ever-changing regulatory environment. At this point it’s useful to point out that the word ‘waste’ describes any substance or object which the holder discards, intends to, or is required to discard.
Waste and recycling is a heavily regulated activity, many of whose regulations derive fromthe EU, and oth- ers fromour national parlia- ments in the UK, Scotland & Wales. These can be sum- marised in four points: • All waste is the responsi- bility of the organisation that produces it. • As such, all organisations must be able to justify where their waste went and what happened to it. • The waste hierarchy im- poses a duty to reduce, reuse or recycle this waste and to use landfill or incineration only as the last resort. • Failure to adhere to these rules can result in expensive penalties and adverse PR. Now, it would be easy to
continue this article by de- tailing the obligations your company has to adhere to but you can easily find this out by readingMITIE’s ‘little guide to waste outsourcing’. Instead, I would like to give
you some advice on how to make themost of legislation that’s out there which will help to drive your organisa- tion up the waste hierarchy and which will help to keep you on the right side of these regulations. In a nutshell, legislation
drives you to: • Reduce the amount of waste you produce. • Reuse items that you don’t need. • Recycle themajority of the materials put in your bins. • Send less residual waste to incineration or landfill.
A hierarchy thatmakes sense
This approach is also called the waste hierarchy and we
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use it with all our clients to improve their resourceman- agement performance and reduce their environmental impact.
words, it’s about designing out the waste fromyour business processes and aiming at achieving zero waste, thus incurring zero cost. That’s an attractive proposition for any company! It’s a simple enough idea but the implementation can be difficult. Look to assess your internal processes and im- plement changes that will reduce waste coming in and going out of the organisation.
Reuse Reduce
‘Reduce’ combines the pre- vention of the production of the waste in the first place and theminimisation of the waste that cannot be pre- vented. This is achieved by applying a joined up ap- proach to waste throughout the organisation. In other
‘Re-use’ involves preserving the whole formof a product or part of a product at the end of its life in order to re- turn it to like-new or im- proved performance. This is often achieved through part- nership with external organi- sations, often in the charitable sector. So, if you have redundant furniture or old-ish IT equipment, it can be renovated and will help someone else.
Recycle
Recycling involves process- ing used and/or unwanted materials into new prod- ucts to prevent waste of po- tentially useful materials. Recycling works better when a full source segre- gation recycling scheme is tailored to local circum- stances, whether in a pro- duction space or an office location. Every employee, contrac-
tor and site visitor is then empowered tomake the right choice by choosing the right bin for the right recy- clablematerial, helping their organisation achieve its environmental aims. Thismonth, the landfill tax
increased by another £8 to £72 per tonne,making recy- cling amuch cheaper option for organisations around the country. This is what the legislator intended, as the county has tomeet increas- ingly ambitious recycling targets.
The Cornerstone
To sumup, the waste hier- archy has become a corner- stone of sustainable waste management,making or- ganisationsmore aware that their waste strategymust prioritise reduction over reusing and recycling. At MITIE, we specialise in im- plementing the waste hier- archy with clients in all sectors, whether it’s to kick start a new recycling scheme, to instigate savings based on waste reduction or to go zero waste to landfill in multiple
locations.My strong advice to all compa- nies out there is to embrace the legislation by looking at your processes, find the weak points in your opera- tions and act accordingly. If you're not sure then envi- ronmental experts like MITIE’s are only a phone call away. For a copy of our ‘little
guide to waste outsourcing’ please visit:
www.mitie.com/waste
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