Developing a Waste Action Plan for your Retail and Wholesale business

Now that you’ve completed your waste audit, you’re ready to develop your Waste Action Plan. This will document what you want to achieve, how it will be done, by when, and who is responsible for each part of the plan. It also acts as a reference point to review your progress. Here’s what to include:

Work out which materials could be recycled and find a service provider to recycle them.

Identify key materials and consider whether these can be eliminated –for example, by requesting that your suppliers use reusable or recyclable packaging in their supply of products, raw materials or ingredients.

Set SMART targets – Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Reasonable and Time-bound. For example, reduce the amount of paper you use by 50% before the end of the financial year, by moving to paperless marketing methods and offering paper free receipts which will be emailed to customers

Include ‘quick wins’ to help encourage everybody to get involved and keep up their efforts. For example, supply all staff with a reusable water bottle or coffee cup to remove the need for disposable ones.

Communicate the actions you’re taking by using our downloadable communications resources.

Encourage your employees to share their ideas to reduce, reuse and recycle each material.

Develop a system to review and improve your recycling processes, monitoring progress so that you can see where you’ve made improvements and what more can be done.

Don’t be afraid to change the plan if necessary – it’s better to have a live document rather than something that just gets filed away.

Good to know

For larger businesses, a more advanced option is to develop an Environmental Management System (EMS), which works in a similar way to other management systems, such as those that manage quality or safety. It assesses your organisations strengths and weaknesses, helps you identify and manage significant impacts, saves you money by increasing efficiency, ensures you comply with environmental legislation and provides benchmarks for improvements.