Envirowise is a government funded organisation whose target is to help businesses reduce waste and hence save money. All the advice they give is free and confidential so I would urge any businesses out there, however big or small to contact them for a free visit. It’s a very simple process. A couple of weeks ago I filled in a very straightforward online form on the Envirowise website requesting a FastTrack visit from one of their advisers. Someone called me within a week to arrange a convenient time for a visit. The visit itself lasted about 2 hours with a bit of time spent discussing things in the office before heading out into the factory and offices for a tour.
They made a number of recommendations to help us save energy and reduce waste and it was useful to have someone look at our setup with a fresh eye.
In terms of energy saving, there are 2 big areas that we could make savings:-lighting and heating. Several areas within our premises are used mainly for storage yet they have the same light levels as areas in which several people are working. We could easily change this by removing lights or fitting motion sensors so that the lights only come on when someone is in the area. Even in my own office, light levels could easily be reduced. I have 8 fluorescent tubes in my office but 4 would be plenty to light the whole office sufficiently. (I have moved offices so I no longer have the LED lights) With heating, insulation is the key, particularly because most of our heating is electric. Excluding draughts and preventing warm air escaping will help keep the heating bills down in the winter.
In terms of waste management, the adviser said that we are generally doing the right things but we need to make more of an effort to prevent waste occurring, particularly food waste. There is currently a lot of waste muesli that ends up in the bins and this is something that I’ll be addressing in the future. Other ways to improve recycling rates are to put better labels on the bins showing what can go in each one, and to try to give staff more incentive to recycle.
Envirowise will be sending me a report, hopefully by the end of the week and from that I’ll be able to work out what the potential cost saving to the business will be should we implement all the measures they suggest. Overall I found the visit very useful and informative and I’m sure that we’ll be taking forward some of the suggestions that they made. I would recommend that every business takes advantage of this free resource – it could easily save you money as well as improving your waste management systems.