With businesses closing their doors for the holidays and the weather getting colder, the winter months present some unique challenges around commercial waste management. Keep the following points in mind as the mercury drops:
WINTER WEATHER
The cold weather affects your business waste and its removal in a few different ways.
- Wet waste: Wet cardboard and paper can quickly turn to muck. Wet waste can contaminate your recycling, undoing the hard work you have put into your waste strategy.
- Frozen waste: As above, frozen waste can cause contamination when it melts. It can also make it difficult to separate different waste types for recycling. Waste also often expands when it freezes, which can damage your waste bins.
- Waste in the wind: When the weather gets very bad, this can mean strong winds. Wind can cause bins to blow over, which can result in damage. Depending on the location of your bins, this can also mean rubbish is strewn around, blown far and wide by the wind. Nothing cements a poor reputation like littering the streets with your waste.
- Collections: When the weather is bad, this can cause unavoidable waste collection delays.
- Bin access: In the case of heavy snowfall, this can affect access to your bin storage – which could cause some running around on collection days. Similarly, snowbanks and snowed in containers can hide bins from view, which can also affect collections.
Cold weather waste solutions:
- Strategise for safe bin collections and the health and safety of anyone dealing with your business waste. Ensure there is a clear, de-iced path to and from bins for movement on foot or by forklift.
- If bad weather is expected, keep bins indoors wherever possible.
- Allow some room for waste to freeze and expand. Don’t overfill bins and containers.
- Ensure your bins close securely at all times.
- Accidents tend to increase in wet and icy weather – especially at sodden entrances and exits. Keep your waste bins well clear of these points on your premises.
HOLIDAYS
The holidays can interrupt your business’s usual waste management routine.
- Within your business: Employees going on leave can affect timeous collection and cause stored waste to increase when collections are missed. Depending on the nature of your business, the holiday period can be a waste intensive time. This makes bungled planning around waste responsibilities over the festive season a potential storage problem.
- Waste collection interruptions: Your usual waste collection schedule could change on and around holidays.
Holiday waste solutions
- Make waste everyone’s responsibility. Make it a goal for everyone within the business to reduce, re-use, and recycle as much as possible – especially during waste intensive times. Allocate waste duties and don’t miss any collection days.
- Contact your waste management provider to find out more about their winter waste collections.
The business waste specialists at Smarter Business aim to take the hassle out of waste and commercial waste recycling through expertise and exceptional customer service. Contact Smarter Business for tailored business waste solutions and strategies for businesses of all sizes.
Photo by Jasmin Sessler on Unsplash
