12 August 2016
With Recycling Week just a month away, Lucy Gibbons from Bright Green Businesses finds out what can be done to help improve recycling across a range of different areas.
To find out more, representatives from the business recently attended an event hosted by Zero Waste Scotland which looked at the latest public campaigns tackling issues of on-the-go recycling, Reduce & Reuse and Love Food, Hate Waste.
We heard from a number of projects supported by Zero Waste Scotland including Glasgow School of Art Sustainability where they are appealing to people’s sense of curiosity to encourage their community to rethink their relationship with waste and recycling. Overall, the event showed us some interesting areas of crossover between nationwide campaigns and actions we can take in our own organisations. The advice could be applicable to companies looking to improve their environmental impact.
Understanding the range of actions that can be taken speaks directly to implementing an Environmental Management System (EMS) in your workplace and gaining accreditation for it.
Recycling Week (12th-18th September) is a perfect time to embark upon greater pro-environmental behaviour either by improving existing activities or instigating a new venture. Recycling Week aims to encourage greater action towards recycling targets and coordinates efforts across the country. These actions can be large or small but should fit more generally into your waste management strategy.
More information about carrying out activities can be found here. Make sure you also register your activities for Zero Waste Scotland to promote and record.
Tips for developing a waste management plan
Exemplary projects inspired us to think about our own activities to carryout during Recycling Week. We have organised an environmental placement within recycling group Changeworks and are also holding our Environmental Placement Programme award ceremony with stalls for pro-environmental groups. As a team we will also be carrying out our updated EMS training at our offices and hope to arrange a litter pick.
Environmental Accreditation
Gaining Environmental Accreditation ensures confidence that your EMS meets legislative requirements. It also helps demonstrate your corporate social responsibility to shareholders, regulators, customers and clients. Overall, effective EMS can reduce costs and limit environmental risks.
Bright Green Business offers a UKAS accredited EMS (called Green Ticks) which has been designed to offer a methodology to register your organisation against the requirements of BS8555:2003. BS8555 is a British Standard, designed as a method to enable businesses to manage their environmental impact in an affordable way. This system allows individual companies to obtain a level of standard suitable to them, in a more cost effective and less time consuming manner particularly for smaller businesses. This is in contrast to ISO 140001 which is often too expensive for SME’s. Achievement of phase 5 of BS8555 is also of an internationally higher standard than that of ISO140001.
Bright Green Business will support on implementation, inspection and maintenance requirements, and aim to establish your EMS in a friendly and highly practical manner.
For more information please contact mathilda@thebusinesspartnership.org.uk or call us on 0131 603 5040.
