How to Encourage Employees to Recycle at Work

6 Tips to Get Your Employees to Recycle at Work

You may recycle at home, but do you recycle at work? Workplaces are full of paper, disposable coffee cups, cardboard and more. All this stuff is recyclable, so it should be disposed of in the correct fashion. However, getting employees to recycle, understand where to dispose of their waste, and to know what items can be recycled can be difficult. Owing to this, we have devised a list of how to encourage employees to recycle at work.

Though it may seem like a chore, recycling is essential to help protect the environment. Not only are you reducing the amount of waste that goes into landfill, you can also save your company money by spending less on waste disposal. It’s important that you do your part in the workplace to help encourage recycling.

Here are our 6 tips…

1. Start at the top.

If employees see senior staff members and management start to recycle, hopefully, they will follow. Their endorsement is important and it sends a positive message to the rest of the workplace.

2. Educate.

Sometimes people simply don’t realise how important recycling is. It’s up to management to teach the importance of recycling so staff can understand how their waste affects the environment. Part of the key to recycling is actually understanding what can be recycled. There is lots of confusion over plastics and other such materials, and this can lead to people throwing stuff away rather than recycling. If people don’t know, it’s essential to teach them what can be recycled, and if you have multiple bins for different materials, that they know which is which.

3. Reminders.

People can often forget about recycling. With the hustle and bustle of work, it’s can be the last thing on their minds. Putting posters up encourages them to recycle and think about where their waste is going when they may have otherwise forgotten. A good way of reminding people to recycle is to send out a monthly email so that they remember!

4. Cleaning Staff.

Your regular staff may know what to recycle, but do your cleaning staff? If they’re cleaning every day, they could be throwing away piles of dirty kitchen roll, emptying shredders into the wrong bins, or putting normal rubbish into the recycling…

5. Remove individual bins.

Bins under desks encourage individuals to throw everything in the bin no matter what it is. If the waste bin is the closest, then it’s unlikely people will walk all the way over to the recycling point when they have a bin right next to them. By taking the individual bins away, you encourage staff to make a conscious effort to go to the waste point and dispose of their waste and recycling properly.

6. Install Billi taps.

By installing Billi taps in the workplace, you are reducing your amount of waste! Having instant hot, cold and sparkling water means that there is a reduced need for staff to buy drinks. This means less disposable coffee cups and fewer water bottles. All those cups and plastic can be recycled and a switch to reusable glass bottles or mugs can be made.