What is waste management?

Recycling is one method to recover resources like paper, glass, metal and plastic from waste. It depends largely on a person's competence and willingness to separate waste, as well as the municipalities' capacities to handle recycables. In some developing countries recycling might not be in the hands of the municipality but is instead handled by companies that do business with empty PET bottles, old newspapers and cardboard boxes, or scrap metal, etc.

The most important rule to support recycling is not to mix recycables with soiled/wet garbage, like food waste, dirty nappies, used paper towels, etc. In your company get started by placing clearly marked or color coded trash bins in all areas where waste is generated and needs to be separated. Another important step is to reduce the volume by shredding, crushing, tightly packing or compressing the different recycables. This reduces the storage area needed to hold the waste before collection and in most cases also reduces the disposal cost as it is often calculated per unit/dumpster, etc.