Feature
Issue No. 47 - June/ july
Business collaboration cuts waste
While householders in SA are “very effective” at recycling at home, Zero Waste SA says the same people often have fewer recycling options at work.
“There’s no doubt significant amounts of recyclable material continue to be discarded to landfill every day from commercial and industrial work places,” says Zero Waste SA Chief Executive, Ian Harvey.
“A 2007 audit conducted at landfills servicing metropolitan Adelaide confirmed that cardboard, paper, plastics, and food/kitchen organics represented a large proportion of material generated from the Commercial & Industrial sector that is disposed to landfill.”
To address this problem and encourage more recycling of these materials, Zero Waste SA launched the Recycling at Work program.
“This $3 million dollar program includes $800,000 from the National Packaging Covenant and will roll out over two years,” Ian says. “The Recycling at Work program is aimed at increasing the recycling of both dry recyclables - such as paper and plastics - and food waste from businesses.
“The program provides incentives to recycling companies to introduce new recycling bins at businesses and performance-based incentive payments for the collection of recyclable material, so it can be recycled into new, beneficial products.”
He says hundreds of businesses in Adelaide have taken up the challenge.
“Restaurants and hotels are recycling food scraps to be made into valuable compost, printing businesses are recycling off-cuts and offices are recycling plastics which will be made into new plastic products," Ian says. But there are several barriers to uptake for Commercial & Industrial workplaces. Zero Waste SA says the most common challenges are:
• knowledge of recycling options available
• space for recycling bins
• existing waste collection and cleaning contracts can make it difficult to introduce recycling systems
• cost of introducing recycling syst...
