Published date: 12 September 2024
It takes a team - recycling advice from our colleagues
Improving the recycling at your site is a team effort.
To make lasting and impactful changes to how waste and recycling are managed in your building, you need to engage and educate colleagues. Introducing new bins and waste streams won't be effective if people don’t understand how to use them.
Think about asking your team:
- where's the most convenient place for a recycling bin?
- where would they find information the most useful?
- do they understand NHS waste stream colours and the impact they have?
- which bin do common items on your site should go into?
- are there any ideas colleagues would like to share to improve waste?
Mentioning waste just once a week in a colleague meeting or email could greatly improve recycling at your site. Saving you money and lowering your carbon footprint.
We asked NHS Property Services colleagues what they do to recycle better at home and in the office.
Read their tips below:
Sufia Begum – Social Impact Advisor
Know your plastics, some you can recycle and others you can't. I know sometimes we optimistically recycle thinking we have done something good but the plastic we can't recycle can often contaminate the ones we can recycle.
Jill Elliott – Estates Coordinator
Improving our understanding of waste and increasing recycling is a great initiative. Having just visited the Veolia Recycling Plant in London and seeing with my own eyes, they do actually recycle waste and forward onto various entities for recycling into a new life.
It's well worth the effort. As well as machinery, they have about 20 people hand sorting waste every day, so the least we can do is our bit.
Provide the correct waste streams, internal and external bins and label them up with appealing labels to explain what goes where.
My top tip is location is important, keep bins accessible and everywhere they're needed to make it as easy as possible for people to recycle.
Sue Dorrington – Head of Internal Communications
My top tip is to regularly check the bins for rogue recycling that lazier members of my family have put in the wrong bin!
Richard Davies - Soft FM Specialist - Waste & BCP
Supermarkets often provide soft plastic (bread bags, carrier bags) recycling stations as well as battery bins! Take your bags and batteries when you do your weekly shop!
Vera Van Der Wal – External Channels Manager
My top tip is to always tuck lids inside tins, screw metal lids back onto jars, and scrunch up aluminium foil into a ball. This improves recycling rates as small bits of recycling easily get lost in the sorting process.
Bonus tip for people with cats: upcycled wine corks, toilet paper rolls and gift wrapping paper and ribbons make great cat toys.
Kely Martins-Rufino - Receptionist
If you would like to germinate seeds, eggs cartons and toilet rolls does an incredible job and you can transplant directly to the soil and they will decompose over time.
Shevonne Norman - Executive Assistant to Chief Customer Officer and Director of Comms & Marketing
A tip for avid gardeners - re use where possible. I recycle all manner of plastics and glass containers or jars to grow and propagate plants. Cheaper than buying new and good for the environment.
Andrew Statham – Maintenance Operative
The Painting Team in the North take part in a scheme with Dulux, all tins, tubs and lids are returned to be recycled.
Palak Malik- Marketing Executive
My top tip is to wash and reuse plastic ice cream containers, they make great Tupperware boxes.
Learn more about improving your waste
Visit the waste page on our website for posters, labels and guidance that will help you improve the waste management on your site.
