Guidance for Health and Social Care
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Monitoring your recycling service in Health and Social Care settings

Making improvements to your recycling service

Estimated reading time: 2 min

If your organisation has seasonal fluctuations, you may need to make changes to your service to suit your needs at these times. Talk to your provider as soon as you can to find out whether they can make the changes you need.

You can use the feedback you’ve received from both your waste provider and employees to help hone your internal communications on recycling. For example, explaining to staff how to avoid recycling contamination might mean improving signage, offering refresher training or explaining the ‘Dos and Don’ts’ in an email to all staff.

Always keep communication positive, sharing successes and achievements via employee newsletters, at team meetings or via posters. Remember to let your senior management, external partners and customers know, too – this will motivate your employees to continue recycling and encourage them to look for further opportunities for improvement!

What next?

Your waste audits may identify other types of waste your organisation produces that you don’t currently recycle. Can you spot any opportunities to switch to less wasteful products, or refillable ones, so that you can stop the waste being created in the first place? You could also look into options to recycle a wider range of materials that you’re currently throwing away.