Recently we’ve been working hard on reducing our waste to landfill, particularly plastics. Operations Manager, Wayne Collingwood, has been managing this process and is delighted to see it’s already resulted in a dramatic decrease in the rubbish we are sending to landfill.

Providing health and safety gear and workwear does incorporate a lot of plastic. Items arrived to us on pallets wrapped in plastic and inside boxes items are wrapped in further plastic. There are good reasons for this – plastic keeps garments clean and protects things like safety helmets, so they arrive with our customers in pristine condition.

“Ultimately our long-term goal is to eliminate plastic wrapping from our processes. But that’s going to take time,” says Wayne, “So in the meantime we wanted to divert as much as possible from landfill and ensure we were doing the right thing by finding a true recycling option.”

After researching companies that could support us in this initiative, we chose Envirowaste. They provided a cage bin for the disposal of soft plastics now stored alongside our cardboard recycling bin. These are then collected as required and taken to recycling facilities.

Our main bin, which goes to landfill, is now collected once a fortnight rather than once a week. So, we have effectively reduced our rubbish to landfill by 50%. It doesn’t stop here as we have ambitious goals to reduce our landfill waste even further.

In the long term we are working with suppliers to reduce and eliminate plastic as a form of packaging and protection. This is a complex problem but it’s an urgent one says Wayne and it’s one that we’re focused on in collaboration with suppliers and other environmentally focused organisations.