New year's resolution: reduce, reuse, recycle

Reducing the impact we have on our planet is now more important than ever. According to Statista, over 3.5 million metric tons of plastic are thrown away as waste in the UK each year. One way that you can make a difference is to implement the three R's to sustainability and reduce, reuse and recycle your plastic packaging wherever you can.

Now the New Year is upon us, it’s time to start thinking about how to recycle or tidy away the Christmas clutter at home. It is also a great time to do this in your office too, or even better, assess your wider impact and transfer some of your day to day best practice to your onsite manufacturing operations.

With so many types of equipment, components and technologies in our workplaces, it’s no surprise that this comes with lots of packaging. This can eventually build-up, hit your bottom line or take up valuable space which may stop your workforce from working to their fullest potential - in clean and organised workspaces.

The plastic packaging tax

This new type of tax is coming into effect as of April 2022, impacting all UK customers who receive plastic packaging or goods, UK plastic packaging manufacturers and shipping organisations, as well as the business customers of UK-made plastic packaging. The tax will not apply to manufacturers and shipping organisations using 10 tons or less of plastic per year.

Having been designed to help reduce the amount of plastic used in packaging, the tax will encourage businesses across the production manufacturing, food manufacturing and many other manufacturing segments to rethink how they use or rely on plastic in their packaging.

The tax will not apply to any plastic packaging made out of 30% or more recycled plastic, or any packaging which is not mainly plastic, with the hope that it will motivate more businesses to consciously use more recycled materials in their operations.

What can you do as a business?

ERP software solutions help businesses like yours to streamline operations for efficiency, but how can businesses become more efficient in their plastic consumption?

When it comes to the plastic packaging that you use to ship your orders, are there strategies you can deploy to combine orders to reduce the overall packaging used? Can you implement lean processes to ensure you are not over-ordering, are optimising the utilisation and have systems in place that ensure waste is kept to a minimum?

Are you able to reuse any of the packaging? It’s worth asking around your team to find out if anyone could repurpose boxes or protective wrap to use for gifts or moving house.

For packaging that you are unable to reuse, are there options available to you to recycle instead of sending it to landfill? All of these things are worth considering. You’ll not only make your workspaces more pleasant places to work, but you’ll also have the benefit of knowing that your business is reducing its negative impact on the planet.

Benefits to reducing, reusing and recycling

Research from Nielsen suggests, that your customers are also very likely to care about how you are implementing strategies to impact your environmental footprint. You may find that your reduce, reuse and recycling efforts will save money on raw materials, help you avoid Plastic Packaging Tax charges, but also make your organisation more appealing to your customers.

As an organisation, it’s your own legal responsibility to dispose of your waste appropriately and by using the three R's, you will naturally become more cost-effective, plus with less waste you’ll have reduced needs to dispose of items.

By using an enterprise resource planning system you can plan to make the most out of your materials, resulting in lower waste and greater levels of control across your business processes so you and your teams can commit to a more sustainable way of working Planning and scheduling tools enable you to optimise your processes, streamline orders and deliveries, as well as track or cutting down on overall packaging volumes and costs.

Start your journey to digitalisation, and go green along the way with a new business management system – helping you to improve workforce productivity and benefit the planet

Use our free business review template to access how you can implement some quick win reduce, reuse and recycle strategies here

 For more information on finding the best ERP solution for your long term success, contact the team here