Wesley Poritz
Improving the sustainability and environmental consciousness of your business is a minefield. While you may already be implementing a variety of measures to cut down on waste and lessen your carbon footprint, there’s always more work to do.
As landfills continue to grow with the discarded carcasses of old cell phones, and businesses go through multiple bags of trash in record time, it’s becoming more and more important to handle your waste and resources responsibly. Not only is it wasteful to simply throw certain things out, but it can also be dangerous when it comes to certain items. So, what’s the alternative? Let’s take a look at the circular economy and what it means for waste disposal and better sustainability for your business.
What is the Circular Economy?
To begin, let’s define what we mean by a “circular economy.” The circular economy (also called circularity) is a type of economic system where we make the most out of every resource at our disposal. In a practical sense, this means reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling as many of the things we use in our daily life as physically possible. While exactly zero waste is fairly hard to achieve, a circular economy strives to get as close as possible.
How Does a Circular Economy Work?
It’s fairly easy to understand the circular economy once you’ve taken a look at how it can be implemented in different settings. A simple example could be seen by looking at the life of a stalk of corn. Corn is grown, then picked from the stalk. The stalk, now having served its purpose, can be taken and mulched along with the corn’s husk. This continues to make use of the parts of the corn which are otherwise unusable. After that, you can also use the cob for something like compost.
For a more complex and relevant example, though, take a look at an old cell phone. The wasteful solution would be to simply throw it away and buy a new one. However, If you’re trying to lessen your impact on the environment, you could make the most out of this old phone. For starters, you wouldn’t be buying a new one until the old one has actually run its course. Once that happens, you can go in a few different directions, some common solutions being to repair it for further use or recycle it so that its valuable materials are reclaimed and reused.
Why Should You Care About a Circular Economy?
There are a ton of reasons why you should care about implementing a circular economy at your workplace. For starters, you’ll be getting the most out of everything you use there. That saves you money while also helping to lessen your impact on the environment. There’s really no downside in that regard.
Focusing more on the environmental side of things, a circular economy happens to be one of the most efficient ways to offset a business’ resource costs. Making responsible and informed decisions on how to dispose of things you no longer need means you avoid buying new products as frequently. It also allows you to return valuable resources and raw materials which can be reintroduced into the circular economy. This lessens your personal environmental impact by having a hand in the reuse and repurposing of things that would otherwise end up in a landfill.
As an added incentive, you may even be able to make some money by recycling. Recycling centers tend to offer at least a small repayment for the materials you hand them, so collecting old papers and recycling them is one way to offset your paper costs while being less wasteful. Certain local governments may also offer tax credits for making environmentally-conscious choices like properly disposing of lithium batteries from old electronics.
How Do You Implement a Circular Economy?
Even if you’re on board with the idea of a circular economy in your workplace, how are you going to implement it? Tossing papers in a recycling bin is one thing, but what are you going to do about things that are a little less clear cut? The answer might be simpler than you think.
First and foremost, you’ll have to lead by example. In order to implement policies that are followed company-wide, the people at the top have to do their part. “Do as I do,” is a much more effective motivator than “Do as I say”.
Secondly, you’ll have to make the ability to reuse or responsibly get rid of things easier to do. If you’re collecting old phones to send into a phone recycling service, for example, having a single bucket on the top floor with no corresponding advertisement is not going to get the response you want. Offering a scheme as an installed service that the company provides is the way to go here.
It’s also worth providing some sort of benefit to employees who participate in the scheme. After all, someone is more likely to do something if they get a reward from doing it. A company compost for old coffee filters and discarded lunch could be one idea, and the resulting compost could be made available for employees to take home for their own gardens.
Above all else, effectively using a circular economy model within your workplace will require a unilateral change in mindset. Much of our consumer culture is based around single-use products that are easily disposed of. While not everything we have is immaterial, you can frequently see these attitudes even with more substantial items. Fostering a culture of reuse and responsible disposal goes a long way towards meeting your goals both in and out of the office.
Conclusion
Sustainability is an important part of operating a business responsibly. Whether it’s paper products, food from the break room, or old electronics, knowing what to do with them as they become unusable is an important step in creating a greener future. Implementing a circular economy in your workplace is one way to do this, helping you to make the most out of everything you and your coworkers use, and lessening the burden on the environment while you’re at it.