Waste Reduction for Green Businesses

A detailed look at the waste stream of any business will show the owners the true cost of the waste they produce and make plainly evident the maxim that “waste is money.” Looking at waste from a new, sustainable perspective can often show how waste, rather than being an expense item, can instead become an income item—that what may have been your company’s waste in the past can be an important input for another company’s industrial process—that, in fact, it isn’t really waste unless and until you actually waste it.

By looking at your company’s waste stream in detail, you will begin to understand the true cost of waste: that every single thing that your company disposes of—every single thing that leaves your business not as a saleable product, from used packaging, to trimmings, to waste oil, to smoke stack emissions, to plant effluents—was initially purchased. When purchased materials become waste, you are quite literally throwing away money. Waste not only doesn’t make environmental sense, it just doesn’t make business sense either. How to reduce, sell, or eliminate waste in your business is a major component to greening your business.