We like to talk about recycling in this industry—paper, that is. There are some great statistics on how we’re part of a sustainable product lifecycle—from sustainable forest management to paper production driven by renewable energy to the high percentage of paper and board waste that is recycled—but what about the rest of the waste generated elsewhere in our companies?

For example, what happens to the plastic water or Gatorade bottles your employees use on break every day? Or the single-use coffee cups they bring in with them? If your company has 20 employees, and half of them use single-use plastic bottles in a given day, that’s 50 single-use bottles per week. If you run two shifts, that’s 100 single-use bottles per week. If half of your employees also purchase coffee in single-use containers, that’s an additional 50 recyclable cups and 50 recyclable lids every week, another 100–200 single-use items if you run two shifts. This means 200–300 single-use plastics every week or 10,000–15,000 recyclable plastics lids or containers per year if you consider a 50-week work year. That doesn’t even include the energy drinks. If you have more employees, those numbers increase exponentially.

Source: https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/the-plastic-timeline-how-did-we-get-here/102481/

Considering that we promote ourselves as a sustainable industry, why not address the challenge by offering a recycling program for bottles, cups, and cans? Nearly all printers are already recycling paper. Wouldn’t it make sense to offer recycling for food and beverage waste, too? Not only is it the responsible thing to do, but we all know that customers increasingly care about sustainability and like to do business with companies that share their values.

If only it were as easy as you might think.

Tough Even for the Recycling-Minded

On a personal level, our family is probably more environmentally sensitive than the average brood. We minimize single-use plastics. We recycle everything. My teenage daughter cuts plastic grocery bags into strips, rolls them into balls, and crochets them into market bags. When we go to our friends’ houses, they know to expect me to peek into their open trash receptacles and pull out recyclables and take them home with me.

So when my husband took over as the director of a Christian ministry and summer camp, many expected him to implement a recycling program right away. During the summer, the camp hosts more than 2,000 campers and 100+ full-time and part-time staff, plus year-round rentals and sports programs and an annual corn maze that sees 23,000+ people visitors every season. When all of its programs are taken together, the camp generates a massive amount of single-use plastic and metal can waste. When the facilities staff pull the bags out of the trash cans at the end of every day, it’s painful to see how many bottles and cans are mixed in, all headed for the landfill.

In the U.S., we throw away more than 50 billion coffee cups every year.

The first year my husband took over, the eager twenty-something idealistic summer counselors immediately jumped on his environmental sensitivities. “Why don’t we have a recycling program?!?” they demanded. To which my husband replied, “We should. Now go research it and come back to me with a plan.” He asked them to bring him the following information:

• The best design of recycling bins to use for the campus.
• The cost of those bins.
• How many bins the camp would need and where they would be located.
• The schedule on which the recycling would be gathered.
• Where the recycling would be stored until pick-up.
• What company would collect the recycling and how much it would cost.

He never heard about a recycling program again.

6 Challenges to Implementing a Recycling Program

Once you get into the complexities of a commercial recycling program, there is a lot more to it than most people realize. It’s not like residential recycling where you just put a blue bin out on the curb. There are many hidden challenges that any company, including printers, would need to address before setting one up.

Here is a list of five challenges to consider, put out by CleanRiver, a recycling waste management company:

1. Consider the impact on current trash collection suppliers (if any). How would the recycling program impact your current trash collection efforts? Would the two programs or supplier contracts be compatible? Don’t assume the answer is yes.
2. Whether your geographic location supports a recycling program. Clean River is in Ontario, and they point out that, if you are in Northern Ontario, the nearest recycling facility could be 800 miles away. In the United States, as another example, the population of Montana doesn’t support a lot of recycling facilities, making recycling extremely expensive.
3. Cost and complexity of determining how many bins you need and where. “To determine how many bins you need, you need to understand the flow of traffic and what you’re collecting,” writes CleanRiver. “Look at how many [recycling] streams you want to collect and how many people will be using the bins. Do you require indoor and outdoor bins, and if so, how many will you need?” You may find that, in order to have an effective program, you need a lot more bins than you think, increasing not only the cost of the program, but the time and complexity of collecting the recyclables.
4. Cooperation of the custodial team. Who at the company will collect the recycling? How much additional time will this take? How will collection impact the staff’s other job responsibilities? Do they have the bandwidth to take on that added responsibility?
5. Challenges based on the building or facility design. How will the bins be moved in and out of the building? Or moved around the campus? CleanRiver gave the example of one hospital in Toronto that didn’t have a driveway big enough for a waste hauling truck to come through. Instead of emptying their waste into three main outdoor bins, the hospital had to drag 10 to 12 smaller bins down to the truck.

Source: hbbImage by pch.vector on Freepik

Then There Are People…

To this list, I would add employee and public buy-in. Have you ever looked into the recycling bins in the parking lots of companies that have them? They are filled with trash. The average American doesn’t pay attention to what goes into what bin, so the contents of recycling and trash bins look pretty much the same. In order for recycling to work, however, the recycling stream must stay pure. If it contains too much contamination, the entire batch is considered to be contaminated and needs to be thrown away. What company (or organization) is going to pay someone to sort through their recycling bins and pull out all the trash? (Spoiler alert: none.)

I felt the challenge of people buy-in recently. When I’m at the camp, I pick up recycling off the ground or pull it out of the tops of trash bins and take it home with me. For the corn maze, there is a volunteer eating area where tons of recycling collects. One day, I took in my own recycling bin and set it right next to the trash can. I figured that if it was right there, and if I made recycling easy, people would do it. I kept an eye on the bin all day, and you know how many single-use plastics or metal cans were added by others? None. The only the ones added were the ones I put there. The recycling bin collected trash, and the trash can collected single-use plastic bottles, which I kept taking out and putting into the BYO recycling bin myself.

The greatest, most well thought-out recycling program is for nothing if people don’t use it.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t consider a recycling program for your printing or marketing company. My personal opinion is that every company should have one. The takeaway is simply not to rush into anything. Consider all of the factors, engage your employees, and come up with the best plan together. Recycling isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort—and the strongest, most positive impact happens when everyone is bought in.