The weather is warming up slowly but surely here in sunny Cape Town, and as the bees and birds start a-buzzing, this is the perfect time to focus on trees.

The first week of Spring is Arbor Week: A time where planting trees is the norm and raising awareness of forests being cut down and the loss of natural vegetation the world over is key.

If you cannot plant a tree this Spring, why not try save some. If you don’t already have a recycling system set up for all the “waste”-paper in your offices, why not approach your boss and suggest it.

Businesses around the globe are becoming keenly aware that being environmentally responsible (whether its reducing their carbon footprint or ensuring their “waste” paper gets recycled) is the way to go.

Setting up a recycling system at your work, for all the perfectly recyclable paper that’s thrown away everyday, is a great way to introduce your company to green living and being eco-friendly while you get to do your bit for the planet and her trees.

Wasteonline.com has some advice on setting up your work recycling scheme:

“The essence of a successful office recycling scheme is simple – to collect together a sufficient quantity of a particular type of waste material, and find a merchant to take it away. However, in practice there are often problems to be overcome, and advance planning is essential, to ensure a scheme’s success in a large company setting up a pilot scheme, on a modest scale, is a valuable first step which should enable problems to be eliminated at an early stage in particular, the four ‘c’s need to be addressed – communication, consultation, cooperation, coordination, as a successful recycling scheme will need to involve all the staff of the company:

• Communication will be needed in a number of areas – between staff and management, between the company and merchants, between office staff and cleaning staff, and between the coordinator or coordinating team and other staff. Once established, the scheme will need to be built into induction programmes for new staff
• Consultation – there will be things to be found out and discussed before setting up the scheme.
• Cooperation – everyone needs to do their bit effectively for it to work, particularly in the sorting out of waste, such as types of waste paper
• Coordination – a scheme will need one person or a team (the Green Team/Eco-team etc), depending on company size, to set it up devise communication systems, provide feedback, and measure its effectiveness.”

To read more on waste at work and how to combat it visit their site here.

Hope this has been helpful and that you can start recycling at work today!

Let me know how the process goes.

Jade

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