SUSTAINABILITY
WIPING AWAY WASHROOMWASTE
Sustainability is a key priority for facilities managers. Businesses must adapt to meet carbon and waste reduction targets and satisfy the demands of increasingly environmentally-conscious consumers. Joel Quick, Sustainability Manager at Northwood Hygiene Products, looks at how the washroom can play its part.
In washrooms, businesses can make many easy improvements to help to reduce their carbon footprint and meet their ESG commitments. From choosing sustainable products and minimising waste to working with responsible suppliers, washroom hygiene strategies can add up to significant change.
Why circularity matters A circular economy is a closed-loop system aimed at eliminating waste and preserving the earth’s resources. It prioritises the re-use of materials, prevents the over extraction of natural resources and reduces the number of useable materials that end up in landfill. It’s a resilient system that’s good for people, business and the environment.
When it comes to washrooms, businesses can adopt this approach by using products that are part of the circular economy.
So, for example, instead of disposing of used paper hand towels from washrooms, these towels can be collected separately and recycled to make new material for the production of new hygiene paper. As well as significantly reducing waste, using this type of paper towel also minimises the need for fresh pulp fibre.
Reducing energy Worldwide, the pulp and paper industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy, accounting for 4% of all the world's energy use, so reducing the amount of virgin pulp used can make a significant reduction in de-forestation and energy usage.
Northwood Hygiene is committed to achieving zero waste in landfills and our Green Loop closed loop recycling programme has been further expanded to recycle hand towels and part-used rolls. Customers are provided with special recycling bins, which collect the paper waste in the washroom. The paper is then collected and sorted and returned to our paper mills where it will be recycled into future washroom hygiene products.
As a true UK manufacturer with a domestic supply chain, Northwood is proud to now manufacture more than 95% of its paper products in the UK. We are part of the full circle economy, which means that we are involved throughout the supply chain - raw material supply, manufacturing, end user product converting, storage and transportation.
By minimising the import of products from overseas and not transporting raw materials or products unnecessarily in the UK, we are also able to significantly reduce the number of miles goods must travel, which means our products are more sustainable.
Cutting plastic It takes up to 500 years for plastic to fully decompose and we use 20 times more plastic today than we did 50 years ago - that’s why cutting our use of plastic and recycling it wherever possible are essential steps to make.
Diverting plastic from landfill is really important and our Green Loop service now offers dispenser recycling. Under this scheme, we remove old soap and paper dispensers from customer premises and recycle them when customers sign up for our dispensers.
The plastic recovered from the dispensers is then recycled into pellets, which will be used to make new products - all helping to keep plastic away from landfill.
Furthermore, as well as being recyclable, Northwood’s Raphael dispensers are currently transitioning to recycled resin across the range.
By embracing a circular economy strategy and using less virgin fibre material hygiene papers in the washroom, FMs can help to reduce waste, minimise pollution and preserve our finite resources. A few small changes in washrooms can make a big impact.
www.northwood.co.uk 38 | TOMORROW’S FM
twitter.com/TomorrowsFM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54
