Correct waste management at the company:
How to get your employees motivated

First of all, your staff must understand why waste management is important for your company and for the environment. You could make a discussion of the issue a priority at your next works meeting, for example. Show the specific strategy and, if you have one, introduce your waste management officer. Make sure that you also give your employees the opportunity to ask questions.

Follow up with regular e-mails on the issue sent out to all employees by you or your waste management officer. These e-mails allow you to go into more detail about certain rules, processes and matters of concern. This approach will ensure that waste management is anchored in your employees' memories.

As a second step, your employees should attend individual training courses. If processes and procedures change, then the employees affected must be trained accordingly. This might be the responsibility of your waste management officer. This person can adapt the specific content and scope of the training course to the individual situation.

Visual aids are a great way to remind your employees about the everyday implementation of waste guidelines. For example, signs above your rubbish bins can provide information about the correct way to separate the rubbish.

All the rules and processes should also be available as digital documents to ensure that your employees can access them at any time. Save these documents on your intranet or any other location that all employees can access.

Your employees are more likely to implement the laws governing waste when they understand why they should comply with them. Emphasise the importance of waste management for the entire company, and its impact on the environment. When you highlight the contribution that each individual makes to implementing the rules correctly, you will encourage your staff to take responsibility for their own actions.

Having a clear goal to pursue promotes team spirit and motivates your employees. Therefore, set goals you can measure and that you would all like to achieve by a certain point in time. That way, everyone knows that they are on the right track and that their efforts are making a difference. Reducing the amount of waste or increasing the share of recyclable materials are examples of these types of goals.

Your employees will often have the best ideas for improvements because they are usually able to identify problems and difficulties that affect processes straight away. What about an ideas competition in which the best ideas are rewarded with prizes or cash? This will actively encourage your staff to work towards reducing waste.

Don’t just talk the talk – walk the walk as well. As a rule, the workforce follows the management’s example. This means you need to ensure you set a good example and follow all the guidelines.

How well do the measures that were introduced work? Are there any problems preventing implementation? Your employees should have the feeling that they are welcome to voice their opinions openly and honestly. Ask specific questions in order to identify problems at an early stage. 

In most offices, paper waste is the main source of waste, and this belongs to any of the waste paper bins provided. However, other rubbish such as plastic packaging and leftover food also gets thrown into these baskets by mistake. The solution is to use waste bin systems that are used to collect different types of waste.

Tip: do you work with confidential documents? Then paper bins with a paper slot can help to ensure that they remain in the rubbish.

Also, every day your employees work with materials that will eventually stop working or stop being needed. You should set up collection stations for the following items, as they are considered to be special waste and must be disposed of separately:

Both packaging waste and organic waste are produced in the kitchen. They are easy to separate into practical recyclable waste bins. Also, provide containers for collecting returnable glass or plastic bottles so that they don't accidentally end up in the wrong bin.

This is where the largest quantities of waste pile up, such as packaging materials. There are rubbish bins available in different sizes for this type of waste. Colour coding makes separating the rubbish child's play. Blue bins are for waste paper, yellow ones for plastics and synthetics.

Wood, construction materials, insulation materials and chemicals are examples of other types of waste for which separate containers should be provided. Some types of waste are flammable as well. They require special rubbish bins, such as containers made of hot-dip galvanized sheet steel.

To ensure your outdoor areas remain tidy at all times, you can place separate ashtrays and rubbish bins around the premises, or choose a combination of both, known as combination ashtrays. Sometimes, however, rubbish does have to be picked up. You can make this work much easier for your cleaning team by providing waste collection trolleys and gripping tongs.

Tip: does other people's waste often end up in your waste collectors? There are also lockable models that will prevent this from happening.

Did you find these tips helpful? We would be more than happy to help you out with implementing a waste management system at your company. Our extensive range of products has all sorts of solutions for waste management.