Nick Oettinger, Founder and CEO of The Furniture Recycling Group is committed to helping UK businesses implement circular economy principles to help protect our planet for the future.

Here Nick shares his tips and advice on how businesses can reduce their impact on the environment.

It can seem a daunting prospect to implement big changes to your business, but as pressures mount from consumers and other businesses to go greener, it’s never been a better time to implement more sustainable ways of working.

Resources

Consider using recycled resources throughout your business, from recycled paper cups in the office, right down to recycled materials to produce your core product such as glass, aluminium, steel and plastics. While making a change to use recycled materials may be a slightly higher cost, the cost to the environment is much greater and that’s something your customers are becoming very aware of.

Waste

By using fewer materials in the production process it can reduce the amount of waste. 

While some materials classed as waste can often be a valuable resource, for example some large companies including McDonald’s have begun recycling their cooking oil into fuel for their trucks. This limits the amount of waste they need to remove and reduces the cost impact of fluctuating fuel prices while utilising sustainable practices to protect the planet.

Transport

The impact of transport on the environment is staggering, with domestic transport responsible for over half of the harmful emissions produced, while commercial vehicles were responsible for 15%¹.

There are a number of schemes and strategies that can be put in place to offset carbon emissions from your business such as encouraging your employees to work from home more often or take public transport to  further reduce toxic emissions. However for a more significant impact you can take a closer look at the vehicles and journeys your business is regularly taking to see if there could be quicker or fewer routes scheduled which would reduce the time spent on the road emitting harmful gases.

At TFRG, we developed a revolutionary mattress compression system to provide a more streamlined approach to bulky waste collection. To reduce the amount of vehicles on the road, our new system allows a standard 40ft trailer that on average carries 67 mattresses to transport 450 mattresses, increasing capacity by 572% to reduce the CO2 impact of multiple trips. 

Policies & procedures

There are very simple ways for your business to become more sustainable which can be introduced fairly quickly. Consider becoming a paperless company, ensuring all policy documents are digital, print double sided if required and re-use cardboard packaging where possible.

Ensure recycling bins are clearly labelled and provided across the company, create digital versions of staff handbooks and consider installing air dryers in the toilets rather than tissue paper.

Culture

While there is plenty of advice on how to implement sustainable practices across your business, to make these changes work it takes a collaborative approach with the support of your team to build a culture of sustainability. Without the backing of your team, many ideas won’t be reinforced and the development of environmental innovation won’t be championed.

Consider hosting green workshops, where you showcase the new environmental initiatives put in place while asking your team to share their ideas, so you’re all working together as one united team.

Discover how Nick and the team at The Furniture Recycling Group have helped businesses to reduce their environmental impact via our case studies.

References

1 Department for Transport