True Re-cycling - What Is It?
There are many organisations within the UK who offer re-cycling services for Office Furniture & Equipment. More often than not, what this really means is that redundant products are collected from the disposer, sorted and graded, items that are suitable for re-sale are segregated and sold to second hand furniture dealers and/or donated to charities. Items not fit for re-use are treated as waste and sent to landfill in many instances.
Traditionally there has been a second hand market for office furniture in which, for example, desks and chairs from a smart office in the city will be re-used be charity organisations. The key though is to find ways of adding value by remanufacturing so that the 'second life' item is of sufficient value to warrant the process of refurbishment.
Amaryllis Environmental Services is the only full service provider in the UK that offers on-site repairs and maintenance, Renovation & Restoration, Remanufacture, component re-cycling and environmental disposal.
Whilst we do give donations to charities and support many such organisations throughout the UK, we also work with a number of Government organisations and Blue chip companies on re-cycling programmes and have prevented less than 4% of everything that we have processed going to Landfill. Last year alone, we collected in excess of 20,000 tons of office products, including brown and white goods. Our targets for this year are to further reduce the Landfill percentage to 2%.
With the exception of Fabrics and foam, everything we handle is reprocessed and either returned to use or, broken down into components, sorted and sent for re-cycling.
What Are My Legal Obligations In Respect Of Waste?
Waste has become an increasingly difficult environmental and economic problem, one which affects us all and to which we all contribute. Individuals, at home or at work, have a vital role to play in schemes to reduce waste.
Today's complex, technologically based society, combined with population growth, has led to the generation of enormous quantities of waste. As more businesses and organisations consider the effects of their activities on the environment, waste generated at work is increasingly receiving attention. More and more, the production of waste is seen as a form of inefficiency and misuse of resources, which has both economic and environmental implications for individual companies and the country as a whole. Envirowise estimate that waste typically costs companies 4.5% of their turnover.
All businesses have a legal duty to provide appropriate arrangements for the disposal of their waste. There is usually a charge for commercial waste collection, so by reducing the quantity of waste required for collection, companies can reduce the cost of waste disposal. For example, between 1996 and 2000, over 120 waste minimisation clubs involving 5,000 companies were active across the UK. Combined, they managed to achieve a reduction in solid waste of at least 0.75 million tonnes, with financial savings of over £20 million.
Waste from office premises is included in commercial waste, which forms 6% of the 434 million tonnes of total solid waste produced annually in the country.
Industry and commerce produced about 75 million tonnes of waste in 1998/99 in England and Wales. In that year 68% of commercial waste was landfilled, 4% was incinerated and 29% was recycled or composted.
A recent study of resource consumption and waste generation of the financial sector found that 80% of the waste produced in company head offices was Furniture and Equipment waste, paper waste, including printing and writing paper, newspapers and magazines and cardboard.
In any definition of the waste management hierarchy, waste minimisation comes at the top. Both environmentally and economically it makes no sense to produce items which are not necessary and which rapidly become waste. The imminent threat of climate change through global warming is increasingly calling into question how long the developed nations can continue to consume energy and resources at their current rate. Consuming less is the most fundamental step in moving towards a more sustainable society and in reducing waste, however, since it involves fundamental changes in attitude, it is a much more difficult thing to achieve, and to measure, than recycling.
Waste audits
An important step in instituting a waste minimisation programme is to conduct an audit to measure the usage of consumables, and the types and amount of waste produced. It provides a baseline from which to measure the effectiveness of the programme. This can be very significant in terms of motivation, as many waste minimisation measures seem, on the face of it, to be quite trivial. The results, though, are cumulative, and often quite startling. For example, one office found that using both sides of A4 paper would save £4000 per year. The audit can either be undertaken by company staff, or by an outside organisation, such as an environmental consultancy.
The basic role of a waste audit is to identify the what, where and how of waste generation. It should include both the nature and amount of waste, and its cost to the company. As well as providing a benchmark by which to measure the success of waste minimisation procedures, it will identify opportunities for implementing such procedures. A waste audit should:
Identify all points at which waste is generated
Identify the origin of each type of waste
Monitor the waste to identify its quantity and type, and its environmental effects
Establish methods of measuring the waste for monitoring purposes
Identify the costs of the current disposal methods, including treatment, handling, storage and transport. Identify any wastes, which are hazardous and consider how they can be separated from the main waste stream, or replaced with a non-hazardous product.
Look at opportunities to reduce, recycle or re-use the waste
Set targets for reducing waste
Durability and obsolescence
Product durability and life span are now receiving increasing attention in the office; these issues are particularly relevant to capital items such as computers and similar hardware. Increasing the life span of products is a key factor in reducing their environmental impact, since, on average, for one tonne of waste at the consumer end of a manufactured article, there are 5 tonnes at the manufacturing stage and 20 tonnes at the site of initial resource extraction The New Economics Foundation have found that there are complex influences which determine why products last for particular periods of time some relating to design and technology, others to cultural and economic factors
· A recent American study found that the production of a computer workstation led to 60kg of factory waste, 27kg more than the weight of the workstation itself.
Information about product life is scarce, but it appears that the average life of many consumer durables has been reduced. A strategy to increase product life would operate on two levels - designing products for a longer life and extending that life span through repair and reconditioning which might also include upgrading.
This would benefit the environment through the reduction in resource use, reduced pollution and less waste. There would also be economic benefits, since service and repair work would be carried out mainly in the UK even if the item were originally imported. There are possible disadvantages. A product designed to last longer may require an increased use of materials and different types of materials some of which may be less easy to recycle once the product has to be discarded. Another concern is that keeping products in service longer will mean foregoing the benefits of improved environmental performance, for example in energy efficiency, until a later date. However, this has to be set against the energy used in producing the product in the first place, which can be greater than the energy used during its lifespan. The aim is to achieve the optimal life span rather than the maximum life span for a product. Ensuring that the best balance is observed - longevity, design for recycling and product use is achieved using life-cycle analysis study.
Is Making Products Last Longer A False Economy?
There are many products, which are designed for single or short life usage that are commonly found in the office or workplace. Examples include non-refillable ball- point pens, marker pens, plastic cups and cutlery, plastic pots for single portions of milk, disposable wiping cloths, paper towels and metal staples. All these products require raw materials and energy for their production, and resources to deal with their disposal, each process producing environmental impacts. In many instances longer life products can be substituted, sometimes through rediscovered old technology, such as the fountain pen, sometimes through new products, such as refillable marker pens, or low energy light bulbs, which last as long as eight standard bulbs Paper clips and staples can be replaced by a new type of stapler which does not use metal staples. In other instances, organisational changes may enable long life products such as real mugs, to be used in place of disposable cups.
How Should Recycling Work?
The word "recycling" is often used to mean the return of materials to be recycled, via bottle banks, waste paper collections etc. However, this is only the first stage of the process. The collected materials have to be sorted and cleaned, then reprocessed and, finally, manufactured into new items that can be sold.
Recycling, therefore, involves all four stages - collection, sorting, manufacturing and purchasing.
Unless all four stages take place, recycling will not work. If markets do not exist for the collected material, it piles up, often at great expense, and cannot be used. The final stage, purchasing of recycled products, is vital for recycling to be economic and for recycling schemes, including those from offices, to be successful. By 'closing the loop' through purchasing office products made partially or wholly from reclaimed materials, we can ensure that the market for waste materials from offices remains strong and office recycling schemes will flourish.
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