Green Office Week

So this week has been green office week (it seems like there’s a week for everything at the moment!). On Tuesday we went along to a client’s site to help their Green Team to promote their recycling scheme. Whilst we were there I had quite a few questions about how best to communicate your efforts to staff and how to encourage them to work alongside you. So in the spirit of green office week I thought I would share with you our top tips for a successful recycling scheme.

1. Make sure you are consistent. This means types of bins, signage and sacks all being the same throughout your organisation.
2. Have signage! Using the colour scheme provided by WRAP ensures you are in line with Councils and other organisation’s signage, so new employees and visitors will all be able to relate to your message. Colour is key here. Coordinating bin lids with the colours of your signs can make a huge difference to making sure your recycling doesn’t become contaminated.
3. Promote your achievements. If people see the results of their recycling efforts they are more likely to carry on recycling, rather than thinking it doesn’t matter. This could be done by putting your reports up on a notice board or intranet or by an office email.

So there you have it, three simple steps to making sure you have a firm foundation on which to build your recycling efforts. If you wanted to do more, you could use weeks like green office week or recycling week to have a stand and further engage with people to make sure they know what they should be recycling.