Is waste eating your profit?
Plastic packaging can enable facilities to be more resourceful, says Cromwell Polythene Managing Director James Lee.
Like many industries, the facilities management sector is striving to make more efficient use of resources and reduce waste. In fact, research undertaken last year by the British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM) shows that the main reasons for sustainability’s importance are good resource and cost management, noted by 66% of those surveyed.
Good resource management is very much a team effort, with cleaning teams working closely with facilities managers to implement environmental initiatives and divert waste from landfill.
Facilities managers are ideally placed to recommend cost-saving initiatives to ensure that valuable materials do not go to waste, whilst also contributing to corporate responsibility targets. Recycling and re-use of materials starts with segregation of the different waste streams on site, such as paper, glass, plastic, and food waste, to avoid contamination. The value of paper, for example, is significantly reduced if it is contaminated with wet wastes such as food, and may even render it unrecyclable.
Poor segregation will lead to increased costs of disposal for many facilities, and may even result in prosecution if the waste is ‘mixed’ and deemed no longer suitable for the waste treatment or disposal option that has been selected. In healthcare settings, for instance, segregation on site is vital to maintain compliance with clinical waste regulation.
Make the right choices
From bin liners to compactor sacks, clinical waste sacks to compostable liners for the collection of food and garden waste, plastic packaging plays an important role in helping with the collection and recovery of recyclable materials and the reduction of municipal solid waste.
Sacks, bags and speciality products for the storage and collection of segregated waste must enable easy separation and limit the chance of contamination, whilst having the lowest environmental impact. For example, our LowCO2
t
environmentally friendly plastics range – including several types of refuse sacks – are lightweight products that use
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less material but achieve the same high performance standards.
Buyers need to look out for independent, internationally- recognised quality standards such as the compostable standard EN13432. This way they’ll know that all the constituents and components of their purchase – for example, food caddy liners or green waste bin liners – will biodegrade and compost as expected.
Responsible use of plastic
Lightweight plastic packaging can help facilities use resources more effectively in other ways too. For example, it helps keeps food fresher for longer, reducing waste. It also enables the safe containment of liquids such as cleaning products, for example. As long as it is disposed of correctly as a recyclable resource, plastic is the greener option. Plastic, and indeed any other irresponsibly discarded material, can harm the environment – so we need to ensure that their value is recognised, and they don’t become throwaway products.
Responsibly produced plastic packaging can have a high recycled content (up to 100%) and can be reprocessed many times, not only saving virgin material but associated energy as well. Recovering plastics is both resource and energy efficient, and by specifying ever more recycled plastic content in products we are helping grow the market for recyclates. Where this is not practical, the calorific value can be recovered to generate electricity or heat at the end of their useful life, through energy from waste (EfW) plants.
Plastic packaging also brings value and efficiencies to the supply chain – weighing 4.5 times less than alternatives including paper, cardboard, glass and metal, thus reducing transportation costs.
Adopting sustainable working practices doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive and by using resources more smartly, facilities will see cost savings, alongside environmental benefits.
www.cromwellpolythene.co.uk twitter.com/TomoCleaning
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