In these challenging economic times there is every reason why recycling and waste minimisation should be near the top of an organisation's priority list.
With a potential £6.4 billion in savings available for UK businesses by using resources more efficiently it’s clear that being green makes good commercial sense that can go straight to your bottom line.
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Introduction Welcome to the first edition of the stakeholder briefing.
This briefing is designed to help spark new ways of thinking and share best practice amongst like-minded organisations aiming to realise those benefits. We hope the briefing will evolve into a forum where you can learn about the latest developments in resource efficiency and put forward your own views. It will also highlight examples of how WRAP works in partnership to improve the way we use resources and showcase the environmental and economic benefits this brings.
I hope that you find the briefing useful and would very much like to hear your feedback and the topics you would like us to cover in future. -
Resource efficiency Good for business. Good for the environment.
In a recession, improving efficiency is top of any company’s to do list. While the green agenda may have slipped from newspapers’ front pages, many of Britain’s most successful businesses now recognise that being resource efficient can play an integral role in emerging from the downturn in good shape.
A recent study by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has suggested that the potential resource efficiency gains for British business are in the order of £6.4 billion. With increasing demands from consumers, clients and legislation, no business can afford to ignore these opportunities.
As the current pace of demand far exceeds the availability of natural resources, sustainable business is also about securing adequate supplies of materials to maintain economic growth in the long term.
With that in mind, business has a major role to play in developing recycling and reuse facilities to process resources from food to construction waste.
Already entrepreneurial companies are grasping the opportunity. Closed Loop, the plastics recycling firm, is set to open its second facility in Wales by the end of this year while Powerday, a construction waste company recently created 35 new jobs when it opened a materials recycling facility in Willesden, north west London.
The company’s £14 million investment over two years will serve the construction industry’s dramatic move towards waste reduction amid huge economic pressures and new legislation demanding formal waste cutting plans for larger projects.
Construction companies, many of which are now working with WRAP, are finding that sorting and storing waste properly on site can potentially cut or eliminate the cost of skip hire.
Halving Waste to Landfill - find out how you can benefit
Willmott Dixon, the construction group, estimated its true cost of waste management at £10 million in 2007, an amount equal to their operating profit at that time. As a result the company is aiming to reach zero waste to landfill by 2010.
Bovis Lend Lease is set to reduce waste to landfill by 70 per cent by 2010, based on a 2007 baseline and early trials promise potential cost savings.
Companies in very different sectors are also seeing the benefit of finding ways they can cut out waste and use precious resources efficiently.
In food production, work by Envirowise has found that an average 4 per cent of turnover can be saved through low and no-cost actions which cut waste.
Ginsters, the pasty company, for example, cut food waste by 47 per cent by re-examining production processes.
Packaging lightweighting is also generating savings for food and FMCG businesses. Hall & Woodhouse, the brewery behind Badger and Tanglefoot beers last year redesigned its bottles with help from WRAP saving 1,300 tonnes of glass a year, a 24 per cent cut.
Opportunities to find new customers and save money should be grabbed in a recession – while helping save the planet can only add to the feel good factor for any business.
See the differences resource efficiency is making in the retail supply chain.
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WRAP news £2 million capital grant programme launched.
The grants, which target companies in England and Northern Ireland, are intended to boost recycling capacity by at least 40,000 tonnes per year by 2011. Projects will be able to claim up to 30 per cent of the finance required to develop and expand their processes. To support the scheme, WRAP is also publishing new research. The first project will examine the potential costs involved in extending municipal kerbside collection systems to include mixed plastic packaging.
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Blue sky thinking Time to celebrate being lightweight?
GlassRite, WRAP’s programme to help drinks producers cut the amount of glass used in bottles, has been highly successful in helping companies save resources and money. This year, several new initiatives will take the programme to the next level.
Next off the blocks is a specialist task force which will be examining how the amount of glass used in champagne bottles might be reduced. The fizz in champagne increases the risk of breakage, but experiments by WRAP, in partnership with supermarket Sainsbury's with one of its sparkling wines, safely reduced the amount of glass used per bottle from 835g to just 575g.
Another way to reduce carbon emissions and costs in the supply chain is via bulk importation, in which wine is not bottled until it reaches the UK. New research reveals that the UK has the capacity to bulk import an additional 144 million litres of wine as the wine filling industry has the capacity to increase production by at least 274 million litres using its current infrastructure. This would enable an extra 47,250 tonnes of recycled glass to be used in bottle manufacture in the UK, helping to create a new market for the excess of green glass here. That would be a step towards the nirvana of a ‘closed loop’ scheme, in which waste resources are reused locally. Now that would be something to pop a cork for.
Mapping waste in the supply chain
UK households throw away an estimated 6.7 million tonnes of food each year worth £10 billion, most of which could have been eaten. Action to cut down on bought food which ends up uneaten in household bins is already bearing fruit.
The next step is to tackle food waste along the food chain, before it gets to households. WRAP and Envirowise are carrying out research to create detailed ‘maps’ of where food (and packaging) waste arise in the fresh fruit and vegetable retail and wholesale supply chain. The project, which covers 11 fruits and vegetables including tomatoes, raspberries and bananas, is aiming to develop practical ways to reduce this waste.
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From the Boardroom Sainsbury's focuses on the future.
Resource efficiency has been part of the cut and thrust of operating an effective retail business for centuries but it may still come as a surprise that Sainsbury's has been recycling cardboard since 1912.
Neil Sachdev, commercial director, says: "Saving resources just seems the right thing to do because directly or indirectly it makes good sense."
Sainsbury's resource efficiency activities range from working with suppliers to reduce the packaging on a pint of milk to finding new ways to light the stores or reduce the amount of miles driven by its delivery trucks.
One area key to Sainsbury's brand is fresh food and this is the latest focus of its bid to cut down on waste. Until a few years ago the supermarket was sending 56,000 tonnes of food a year to landfill, an amount which would cost it £2.24 million in landfill tax at today's rate.
The first stage to reduce that was an investment in improving stock and order systems. Sainsbury's also began encouraging local store managers to send food within its use-by date, but past its sell-by date, to local charities.
Now the supermarket plans to stop sending food waste to landfill this year, and all waste going to landfill by 2010. The first step will be to send unwanted food to anaerobic digestion (AD) facilities that turn waste into energy. Sachdev says the project will involve a slight short-term rise in costs but he insists: "long term it will save us money."
"Landfill tax is going up every year and we will be able to get rid of the machinery we use to compact the food waste for landfill in stores.” Sainsbury’s is also discussing how it might be able to buy discounted energy from the AD plants it supplies.
Sachdev explains that this sort of project fosters improved behaviour within the business. Bagging up waste food to be processed, for example, will make store staff more aware of the amount that is thrown away and help promote waste avoidance.
Sachdev says it is important to have a longer term view of how efficiencies will help the business.
Some of the resource efficiency projects Sainsbury’s has embarked on have a very swift pay-back, such as a computerised transport management system which has helped reduce the amount of lorries travelling around the country for the supermarket by 2,000 vehicles a year.
But others are not immediately commercially viable, such as high profile experiments with windmills and biomass boilers. Sachdev says such experiments with new technologies are still important. “We need to know their true potential,” he says.
Aside from pressure from and the commercial incentive to drive efficiencies and save money, Sachdev says retailers must act to meet their customers’ expectations.
"Customers are saying to us 'we trust you to do the right things – there are things that bother us at the moment and we expect you to be handling them'."
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Liz's view Highlighting the business benefits of resource efficiency.
WRAP believes there is a potential £1.1 billion in benefits from resource efficiency – that’s just the kind of thing which British businesses need to be able to take advantage of in these tricky economic times.
What’s more, the highly volatile nature of commodity prices in the last 18 months has only served to highlight how resource efficiency is relevant to every business – from heavy construction to food packaging. It really does contribute to the bottom line.
Sometimes, during the everyday cut and thrust of business life, it can be hard to stand back and examine where the opportunities for resource efficiency lie. WRAP’s job is to help organisations to look to the future and identify new ways to save resources and money.
We are uniquely placed to pull together all the links in the supply chain and help people work together to create meaningful change.
Non-bottle mixed plastics from household bins account for about 1 million tonnes of waste a year and most of that currently goes into landfill. This highly visible waste is obvious to consumers, retailers and manufacturers alike and everyone is keen to find a viable way to recycle it.
Research by WRAP has already found there is a market for mixed plastics and these materials can be valuable if reprocessed correctly.
By working with reprocessors and retailers WRAP has been able to run a number of trials examining different recycling methodologies.
Last month we reported on the results of our trials and the plans for the next phase which is commercial scale development. Our new £2 million capital grants scheme to help fund plastics recycling facilities is designed to promote yet another way for the resource efficiency industry to create jobs while helping preserve the planet for future generations.
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WRAP update Keep posted with the latest developments.
Construction Commitments: Halving Waste to Landfill
Over 100 leading construction industry businesses have committed to WRAP’s 'Halving Waste to Landfill' voluntary agreement, in the last six months. That commitment relates to projects with a total value of £4.2 billion and shows resource efficiency remains a priority despite the recession. Confirmation in the 2009 Budget that landfill tax will continue to increase year-on-year has provided an additional incentive for companies to reduce the amount of waste they produce. Currently the construction sector wastes around £1.5 billion in unused materials and sends some 25 million tonnes of waste to landfill annually. Companies working on projects worth more than £300,000 are now legally obliged to develop site waste management plans, but WRAP’s voluntary agreement takes the process a step further.
On-line toolkit to help local authorities
With landfill tax at £40 a tonne, waste prevention is a priority for local authorities. With that in mind, WRAP has launched an on-line toolkit to help plan how and what to implement at a local level to prevent waste and then to measure and prove its benefits. Developed in partnership with several local authorities, the toolkit includes hints and tips on how to bring about behaviour change on home composting, food waste reduction and reuse.
Furniture Matters, a home and office furniture recycling facility in Lancaster, is expected to create 250 training and volunteering placements as a result of new contracts won with local authorities. The company was able to secure and develop three new contracts after WRAP granted funding for the provision of an interim manager for nine months. The interim manager was able to handle the day-to-day running of the business enabling Furniture Matters’ projects delivery manager to go out and win new business which will double the organisation’s turnover and divert 2,000 tonnes of waste from landfill.
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Your questions How can recycling at work benefit my business?
Setting up a recycling scheme is easy with the right planning.
Recycling in the workplace can make everyone feel good about getting involved to protect the environment. It can reduce clutter, it’s cost effective and could save you money.
Setting up a recycling scheme is easy with the right planning.
First consider what materials you could recycle. For those working in an office, the obvious first step is to recycle paper. Even confidential documents can be recycled by specialist providers. Some offices prefer to shred documents themselves, but it is good to check with your potential recycling provider whether they accept this kind of waste.
Cardboard, printer cartridges, plastic bottles, food and drink cans and electrical equipment can all be recycled. Small retailers can also consider recycling shrink wrap while those in the hospitality industry might be keen to recycle glass bottles and jars.
The next step is to visit our online Recycle at Work directory which allows you to identify recycling waste contractors in your area.
Finally, consider how the materials you want to recycle will be collected or whether you will have to drop off materials at a recycling facility. Check if your potential contractor will provide collection bins and the frequency with which they might collect. Ensure the contractor has a Waste Carriers Licence and check the charging agreement.
When setting up your scheme bear in mind how much space you have on your business premises to store recycling bins and containers.
Staff training – a successful recycling scheme requires support from all staff and those schemes which are convenient and easy to use will be most successful. Most schemes benefit from some staff training to explain the new systems.
For free, independent advice on the business benefits of recycling at work, contact Envirowise on 0800 585794 or via e-mail.
