Despite efforts to reduce CO2 levels, it’s been reported recently that global warming was practically the same in the first fifteen years of this century as it was from 1950-99. This came as a huge blow to environmentalists worldwide.
These figures should spur businesses into action when it comes to their environmental footprint, and make all of us consider the role we play as individuals in the ongoing battle to make our planet greener.
Many of us play little to no part in the effort to reduce global warming, believing our impact to be miniscule and actionable change to be too difficult or expensive. However, this mind-set must be changed, and the waste industry has an important role to play in doing this by making it easy for people to be planet savers.
This is because recycling is one of the easiest ways every individual and business can reduce its impact on the environment. When used materials are converted into new products, we reduce the need to consume natural resources through mining and forestry.
Recycling also reduces the need for landfills, which produce nearly a quarter of the UK’s methane emissions - methane is 21 times more potent than CO2. In contrast, recycling saves the UK more than 18 million tonnes of Co2 per year which is the equivalent of taking nearly 4 million vehicles off UK roads.
Recycling offers additional business benefits alongside saving the planet. Strong environmental policies are being used to attract employees, customers and partners. People entering the workplace want to work for companies that stand for something and suppliers and customers increasingly want to work with green partners. Ethics are just as important as profits now.
Ultimately, recycling makes business sense, not just because it’s solving some of the big environmental issues we’re facing but because it attracts talent and allows businesses to save money. We find that businesses save 30% on average on their waste collection by recycling with us.
With the latest advances in technology our capacity to understand our impact on the environment is growing. The future will be filled with self-driving vehicles and smarter algorithms that power machine learning environments, meaning we will be able to uncover even more easy ways for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint, whilst saving money at the same time.
