Liz Swafford: The four Rs of workplace recycling

Published 11:32 pm Tuesday, January 7, 2014

While you may be recycling at home everyday, there’s a lot more you can do to help the planet. Especially in the workplace. Keep the four Rs in mind as you go about your day. You’re sure to find small and big ways to be more eco-friendly.

You’re probably among the 80 percent of U.S. workers who say they believe it is important to work for a company or organization that makes the environment a top priority, as reported in a 2008 survey by National Geographic. If you are, I’ll let you in on the four Rs you can do to make the environment a top priority for yourself. They are reduce, reuse, recycle and refuse. I’ll give you some ideas to get started.

Reduce means to make less waste

The best way to reduce your work waste is to proactively think ahead when making purchases.

Your office may purchase disposable single-use coffee cups each month as an example. Every time an employee drinks coffee they throw away a cup. If one person has coffee five days a week, they’ll throw away about 20 cups or more that were only used once. To reduce that kind of wastefulness you can encourage employees to bring their own ceramic coffee mug to work. One mug can last many years and only needs to be quickly washed and stored for later use.

Reducing can also be done by going paperless or switching to digital versions of paper-based items. If your company has newspaper or magazine subscriptions, order them as website subscriptions or e-books if those services are provided. Or use email and e-cards instead of paper letters and greeting cards. You may also be able to receive bank statements and bills online or by email instead of by snail mail.   

Reuse means to use again

Before you throw anything away, take a moment to decide if you can use that item again.

Copy paper that has outdated information printed on the front can be used as scratch paper if the back of the page is blank. A cracked coffee mug can be broken into smaller pieces and used inside a flower pot to help with water drainage. It’s a good replacement for small gravel and rocks. Three-ring binders for documents can be used again in the office by simply changing the labels. Binder clips make great food bag clips too.

A large component of reuse is donating. Office supplies like paper clips, glue, binders and even furniture may find new homes with churches, schools and nonprofit organizations. If the items are still in good, useable condition, it’s always best to extend their life by letting others use them too.

Another aspect of reuse, and my personal favorite, is “upcycling”: remaking items into something useful outside their intended purpose. This can be as easy as painting an old wood desk white to make it look more modern. Or, if you’re really crafty, you can make jewelry out of paper clips.

Recycle means remanufacturing the old into the new

The key to recycling is that the products can’t be given a new life unless you take the necessary steps to get the items into a recycling bin instead of a trash can.

An aluminum beverage, when placed in the recycling bin and sent through the recycling process, will be back on the store shelves as a new soda can in as little as 60 days.

You may already have recycling available at the workplace. Check. The most common item collected in an office setting is paper since it’s usually 40 percent to 50 percent of all waste generated.

To find out more about what can be recycled in our community, and where to drop-off traditional recyclable material visit www.DWSWA.org or call the local recycling center at (706) 278-5001.

For non-traditional or hard-to-recycle items, visit the nationwide directory of places to recycle at www.Earth911.org.

To make your office recycling program even better, visit Recycling at Work (www.recyclingatwork.org), a very helpful site where your company can take the pledge to increase their recycling by 10 percent over the next two years and get free resources to promote recycling with employees.

Another aspect of recycling is purchasing products with recycled content. If you recycle your paper, you should be purchasing paper that has been made, at least in part, with paper collected through recycling programs. To find the right products for a workplace setting, visit the Environmentally Preferable Purchasing page on the Environmental Protection Agency’s website at www.epa.gov/epp. The site includes detailed guides on finding and evaluating green products and services.

When you buy recycled, you support the recycling industry and help maintain the infrastructure needed for this beneficial form of remanufacturing.

Refuse means denying items you don’t need

Refuse items that are packaged with non-recyclable material. This includes buying products in bulk, which uses less packaging material, avoiding disposable or single-serving items like plastic-wrapped cutlery from restaurants and taking a reusable water bottle to work.

You can also refuse to purchase unnecessary replacements for items that are still in good condition, decline print copies of catalogs and phone books and, if you already have subscriptions, opt out of receiving them when you register online at www.catalogchoice.org and www.yellowpagesoptout.com.

The combination of the four Rs will make your office greener in no time.

Liz Swafford is the recycling and education program coordinator for the Dalton-Whitfield Solid Waste Authority. Have a recycling question? Contact her at (706) 278-5001 or lswafford@dwswa.org.