If you own or manage any type of business, you might consider introducing a recycling program for your company. A tremendous amount of paper, plastic, computers, televisions, and phones are tossed out by businesses every year, when these things can be recycled and not wind up in landfills. To encourage recycling at your facility, note a few tips you might consider and which can make this program more efficient and easier on everyone.

Add lots of bins around the space

Workers are probably not going to want to walk all the way from their desk or workstation to the employee kitchen in order to put a plastic water bottle in a recycling bin, and office workers may not want to walk from one side of the office to another just to put paper in a recycling box. By adding lots of conveniently located bins around your work areas, you'll then encourage more recycling overall.

Note, you don't need to put actual recycling bins around your building, but use containers that can be emptied into those bins at the end of each day. For example, every office desk might have one basket for recyclable papers that someone can then empty into a recycling bin at night. You might also provide small totes or bags for collecting plastic bottles and other such items near workers, and those can also then be emptied into the actual recycling bin every day, as needed.

Remove trash cans

Workers will be less tempted to toss recyclable items in trash cans if there are no such cans near them! You may not want to remove all the trash cans from an office or other work area, but if you reduce their size and spread them out, so that not every worker has a trash bin for themselves, those workers will be more likely take items to recycling stations, simply because they have no other place to toss those things.

Spring cleaning

Another good way to recycle items in the office is to plan a regular spring or fall cleaning. Set aside one day or afternoon when everyone goes through their desks and work stations, and through any filing and storage rooms, and cleans out unused and outdated items. This can be old paperwork that is no longer relevant or that can be scanned and stored electronically, as well as electronic items that are not being used by the company. Have your recycling company schedule a special pickup on that day so that nothing is cluttering up the office while waiting to be recycled.