Recycle Business Waste

Good reasons to minimise your business waste

Simpler Recycling

New Simpler Recycling regulations will soon require businesses to separate recyclable materials from the general waste.

From the 31st March 2025 workplaces that generate waste similar in nature and composition to household waste must separate dry recyclable waste (glass, metal and plastic and cardboard and paper), and black bin waste from each other. Examples of such workplaces include offices, retail and wholesale, transport and storage, charities, places of worship, penal institutes, places of education and care homes. Note that there is no minimum weight for food waste collections.

Small businesses with fewer than 10 full-time employees are temporarily exempt until the 31st March 2027.

WRAP have provided a dedicated website called The Business of Recycling to help with the transition to these new regulations. Further guidance can also be found on the Government’s simpler recycling: workplace recycling in England webpage.

 

Good reasons to minimise your business waste

Sustainable management of business waste can sometimes seem daunting, but by taking a few small steps, you can save your business money and improve your environmental credentials. Some good reasons to minimise your business waste include:

  • Reduced waste collection and disposal costs – By finding ways to reduce waste, your company can reduce its operating costs.
  • Reduced resource costs – By reducing waste, your business could use fewer resources, saving money.
  • Improving your reputation – Customers, financial institutions, employees and suppliers have a growing interest in a company’s environmental performance: waste minimisation will show them how effectively and efficiently you control operations.

The Waste Hierarchy

Businesses or organisations that produce or handle waste have a responsibility to follow the waste hierarchy. The waste hierarchy describes the most environmentally friendly way to manage waste material in order of preference.

  1. Prevention– The most preferable option. By preventing waste in the first place, we can save money and cut waste. The sort of practical steps that can be taken will depend on your business type, but by way of example, an office-based business could go paper free, or print documents double-sided. This would reduce the costs of buying paper and paying for its eventual disposal.
  1. Reuse – Reusing objects or materials is another great way to avoid costs, whether it’s simple steps like replacing paper cups with reusable ones, or seeking to form relationships with other companies to reuse materials; bodies such as the help businesses to explore cross-industry resource efficiencies.
  2. Recycling – Recycling waste materials is usually cheaper than disposal, so introducing recycling to your workplace saves money. Details on local authority trade services are provided below.
  3. Other recovery and disposal – Usually the least preferable option, but sometimes disposal is unavoidable.

Your legal responsibilities

All businesses have a Duty of Care for any waste that they produce, which includes safe waste storage and ensuring that the waste is only handled by appropriately licenced companies. The Government website contains a useful summary of a business’s legal responsibilities.

Recycling will be mandatory for businesses from 31 March 2025 and for small businesses with fewer than 10 full-time employees from 31 March 2027. Further details can be found on WRAP’s The Businesses of Recycling webpage and the Government’s simpler recycling: workplace recycling in England webpage.

District trade waste and recycling collections

Most of Leicestershire’s district and borough councils offer a range of competitively priced trade and commercial waste and recycling collections. Use the links below to find out more.

Alternatively, there are a range of private companies that can offer waste and recycling collection services.

If you use a trade waste collection service, disposal will be included. For occasional or one-off disposal, you can take your waste to the Whetstone Transfer Station (visit the County Council website for a list of charges and to find out if pre-booking is required), to the Gypsum Close trade waste facility in Leicester City, to a commercial waste transfer station, or you can hire a skip.

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