Recycling: A Good Business Decision

When you hear about the benefits of recycling you hear about climate change and the rainforest and the landfills and so on. That’s great but you have a company to run and you ask yourself, “How does this affect my bottom line?” That’s a fair question and it turns out that recycling containers are a smart investment.

How Recycling Saves Money

As a rule recycling services charge less than trash services. That’s because recycling is a commodity that can be processed and resold while trash is just, well, trash. This means the recycler can charge you less per volume or weight than a trash company would because they will make additional revenue once they sell the contents of the recycling containers.

How much you can save depends on a lot of factors including your location, the amount of waste generated, the type of waste and frequency of collection. The city of Newport News, Virginia posts an example on their city’s website showing a business with a weekly, 8-yard trash pickup can reduce their waste management costs by nearly 15% by recycling paper and cardboard.

Reduce And Reuse

For maximum profits your recycling containers should be only one aspect of a larger plan that includes reduction and reuse. Don’t print that 20-page report if you can read it online. Offer electronic billing to your customers and provide an incentive to use it. Don’t buy excess refreshments for a meeting; it’s better to run out than to throw food away. Buy non-perishable supplies in bulk to reduce packaging.

Before throwing something away ask whether it can be reused. This can be something as simple as draft documents being kept as scratch pads or shredded for packing material instead of being tossed in paper recycling bins. Allow customers to return packing peanuts to be used in another shipment. Fix rather than replace broken machinery. Donate used electronics to local schools instead of throwing them away.

Look At The Big Picture

Although those hand-waving “clean air and water” arguments may not seem like they affect your company’s future, they do. Your businesses taxes help pay for those landfills that are storing items that should have been in your recycling containers. Air and water quality affect the health of the population and that affects your medical insurance premiums as well as the rate of absenteeism. Plastic is produced from petroleum products so new plastic manufacturing drives up the costs of associated products, including the gasoline that runs your company fleet. No, you can’t enter these figures on the company balance sheet but you should be aware that the big picture does affect your company.

A business owner’s or CEO’s job is to maximize the company’s profitability. Recycling containers can and should be a part of that strategy. Educate yourself on the financial benefits of recycling to cut expenses and improve the organization’s financial future.