Tackling Your Commercial Waste This Christmas

Whatever your business niche, you’re likely to produce a little more commercial waste over the festive season, whether that’s ordinary waste or recyclable material such as paper, packaging and cardboard. Many businesses forget about this increase in waste volume over the Christmas months and are caught short when they discover that it’s harder to organise bins and waste collections during this time of year. Fortunately, there are alternatives for dealing with the extra waste generated over the holidays – and the good news is that you might end up saving money in the process.

Consider your year-round waste management plan

The principles behind sound waste management are the same, whether you run a smaller business or are juggling multiple premises with hundreds of staff. Reducing, reusing and recycling is the way to go all throughout the year, and not just over Christmas, when a few extra precautions need to be taken. December is a great time to consider your overall waste plan and how you’ve managed it over the past twelve months. Are there ways you can spend less, consume less and recycle more of what you use?

While going green might have been prohibitively expensive in the past, the truth is that, nowadays, what makes good environmental sense is usually also good for the bottom line. The average modern consumer is also far more environmentally conscious, so any moves you make towards responsibly and sustainably dealing with your company’s waste will only serve to bolster your green reputation.

Regardless of what your business does, chances are you can make a big difference by starting with plastic and cardboard, since these are the most likely to cause problems, but are also relatively easy to recycle. Commit to going paperless in the office, try to minimise your own paper use, and package your products in smaller, more compact ways that use more recycled and recyclable material like paper or cardboard. Also, investigate whether you can switch to suppliers that use less plastic, or else ask if you can buy in bulk to reduce costs. Depending on your business, you may even find a supplier willing to work on a refills basis, so you can reuse certain containers and packages.

Think about innovative ways to reuse items so that they don’t have to be discarded. For example, it’s now commonplace for companies to reuse cardboard by shredding it and using it as packaging material, and they can also repurpose cardboard boxes to ship out to their own customers. Not only does this save money, but it spares you from needing to process this bulky material as waste.

While it might not be financially feasible for businesses on the smaller side to invest in a commercial waste baler or paper shredder, they can make a big difference by renting a cardboard baler. These devices are incredibly convenient and essentially compact down bulky cardboard and paper waste that would otherwise take up enormous amounts of space. Should your business grow, you can upgrade the baler without penalties.

Don’t pay extra for waste management over Christmas

The conventional way to deal with additional Christmas waste is to pay for more bins or book additional waste collections to cover gaps over December and January. This can be avoided, however, with a few smart precautions taken over the preceding year, as well as a practical plan for tackling waste that doesn’t cost extra.

A baler is for all year round and not just for Christmas! Your business might ramp up over the Christmas season and you may find yourself with extra boxes and packaging material. A baler makes fluctuating waste amounts easy to manage and it means no more overflowing bins. By baling cardboard, you save space, have fewer waste collections, which means extra savings. You also spare staff from the tedious task of having to break cumbersome boxes down to fit into bins

Renting a cardboard baler is relatively inexpensive and more convenient then recycling bins. Even though you can increase the amount of cardboard waste produced, your costs to rent the baler stay exactly the sameYou don’t need to worry about disruptions in bin collection services, staff shortages or collection delays over Christmas.

Cardboard compactors and balers can be a lifesaver all through the year, but they really pull their weight when it comes to the holiday season. For many companies, excess waste can be an unwelcome surprise that they find themselves scrambling to deal with at a time of year they may be least prepared to do so. With a cardboard baler, however, you save time, space, money and man hours, even as carboard and paper waste volumes increase.