Hello,

I've worked in a few different offices throughout my career and have found that various organisations and departments often have different ways of recycling waste such as paper, plastic cups, cans and packaging, etc.

Home recycling has been promoted and encouraged in the UK for a number of years now. Most, if not all, local authorities in Scotland (and as far as I know, throughout the rest of the UK) provide a recycling service to households for plastic, paper and card. Some offer garden waste and glass recycling. But some people are critical because not a lot appears to be done in terms of business and office recycling.

What does your organisation do to recycle:

• Do you have paper recycling bins or use a paper recycling service?
  
• Do you recycle plastic or paper cups, like the ones used in vending machines or with "water at work" style schemes?
• Do you collect aluminium cans and tins for recycling?

Share your office recycling experiences here!

We are currently ISO14001 registered so have active waste streams in place for office as well as our manufacturing process waste.

We recycle:

Office paper (local recycler#1),

Plastic cups (Save-A-Cup scheme),

Scrap metal (local merchant),

Printer and photocopier cartridgees (freepost return to manufacturer),

Polythene / shrinkwrap (local recycler#2),

Plastic granulate (local recycler#2),

Cardboard (local recycler#2),

Hazardous waste & WEEE (Biffa),

Wooden pallets (local recycler#3)

All other waste not recycled is either granulated or baled for landfill.

 N.B:   It is a legal requirement that you ensure that your onsite waste handling activities are covered by a waste Management Licence or exemption from the Environment Agency (EA). Additionally it is your company responsibility to ensure that all waste carriers / brokers have a valid waste carriers licence from the EA. Failure to comply with these may result in prosecution by the EA.

Thanks for the post Martin - intersting stuff.

The plastic "water at work" cups we have are PP, and our local authority don't recycle this type of plastic. We're looking into getting new cups in future - do you use these style of cups?