Disposal Of Waste At Home And Office

So, what should you be placing in the recycle bin? I am sure this is a frequent question raised in every household.

As quite a few of us humans seem to be taking more notice about how we treat our planet, should we not get the recycling and disposal of waste right. I have put together a list of items that should go in your recycle bin.

 

Items that your recycling bin likes

Plastic bottles

• Cleaner and detergent bottles
• Milk bottles
• Drinks bottles (without caps)
• Toiletries and shampoo bottles     

Plastics packaging

• Food pots and tubs (clean)
• Margarine tubs (clean)
• Plastic trays (clean)
• Yoghurt pots (clean) 

Cardboard

• Cardboard egg boxes
• Cardboard fruit and veg punnets
• Cardboard sleeves
• Cereal boxes
• Corrugated cardboard
• Food and drink cartons (clean)
• Toilet roll tubes

Paper 

• Brown envelopes
• Junk mail
• Magazines
• Newspapers
• Shredded paper
• Telephone directories
• Window envelopes
• Yellow Pages

Glass

• Glass bottles and jars (clean)

Metal packaging 

• Aerosols
• Drinks cans (clean)
• Food tins (clean)
• Metal lids from the glass jar

Foil                                                     

• Aluminium foil
• Foil trays (clean)

Why not try SMB records management solution for the residential segregation of your paper. 

What you recycle bins does not like

Your household recycle bin does not like plastics like floppy plastics such as bags, envelope windows, Clingfilm and crisp packets. Polystyrene and contaminated tissue products e.g. kitchen towels that you have used to clean with should not be put in your recycle bin

 

 

Responsibility for waste at the office

Businesses also have an obligation and a duty of care to and must be seen to do everything you reasonably can, reuse, recycle etc and to dispose of your waste correctly. When disposing of WEEE / IT products you must be seen to follow the WEEE directive again, as you reasonably can.

If you need to dispose of your rubbish then you must follow procedures. You should not use companies that do not have the proper certification,  they could be disposing of your waste illegally. They should be a register waste carrier.  They should supply a waste transfer note that showing details for every load that leaves your premises, this will also show the companies waste carriers licence number. This is important to hold on file for auditable purposes. When it comes to a secure shredding service a destruction certificate should also be supplied once the items have been destroyed.

For those offices that shred their own paper and throw it in the recycling bin, it has been documented that shredded paper represents a problem for your basic household recycling plants because of the difficulty involved in sorting the recyclable paper from the nonrecyclable material. Shredded paper can also potentially clog up the machinery and can be difficult to handle.

Consider having your shredded paper collected by a company that specialises in shedding and pulping paper instead. Even better, way waste resource, time and expense with the purchase of a shredder and time taken to feed it, when you can either use a secure sack collection. An ad-hoc secure shredding service to collect your paper or why not make your discarded documents more confidential and book in a scheduled collation with lockable bins for your office.

When it comes to a time that the PC / Laptops need to be replaced make sure you try to dispose of correctly keeping to the WEEE directive as reasonably possible. Get the right company to dispose of your electronic goods. This is important as your hard drives hold a lot of information that you do not want to fall into the wrong hands.

SMB Records Management pride themselves on degaussing (magnetic destruction of the hard drive) before it gets shredded making the destruction of devices very secure. All waste is disposed of in accordance with the BS EN15713 and WEEE directive and ISO 27001. Nothing leaves the UK. When it comes to the collection of your paper we take the confidentiality of your waste documents very seriously, unlike other companies that open the sacks to hand feed shredders, once the sacks are sealed at your premises they are never opened. The sack and contents are shredded, giving you the most secure and confidential shedding procedure possible.

So, whether it be at home or in the office make sure you are disposing of your documents/waste correctly and help the environment.

Don’t let your documents, waste or bags of shredded paper end up at the side of the road.