Sustainable Waste Management – Engaging employees
At the recent 2degrees summit, the Waste Management Open Group discussed the topic of how to get employees engaged in sustainable waste management initiatives. In this post I’ll discuss a few methods for embedding sustainable thinking into the DNA of a corporation.
Baseline – where are we starting from?
Before planning your route it is usually quite handy to know where you are starting from. One way to do this is to perform a waste audit. This can be a formal or informal review of waste policy and strategy within the organisation that indicates how embedded sustainable waste management is within the organisation. Following on from this you then need to get your sleeves rolled up and start reviewing activities within a company identifying the processes that generate waste and the types, quantity and/or weights. A number of websites provide audit tools. You can download a copy of our free audit tool. Ideally, the waste audit will encompass each area and location of the business. It should also extend to key suppliers but this may or may not be practical. Audits should happen on a continuous basis to ensure continuous improvement.
Executive Buy-in
If it is not supported at board level then it may be challenging to keep any initiatives alive. This support can be in the form of internal reduction targets based upon known baseline data or a public statement by the CEO outlining reduction goals. The company may participate in a voluntary disclosure scheme such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) or Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). This keeps the commitment and performance highly visible amongst stakeholders, industry groups and peers which helps to garner corporate focus. Selecting waste and recycling targets as key environmental aspects as part of a ISO 14001 environmental management system will also help ensure they are on the corporate scorecard.
Call in the evangelists
Every organisation will have employees who are really passionate about this stuff. Get them involved early. Make them “waste champions” or go-to people for advice, knowledge and support. You’ll find that, properly motivated, these people can make things happen.
What’s in it for me?
It’s important that employees feel a sense of ownership and involvement in reducing waste. My advice is for senior management to communicate the targets and inspect performance but otherwise to get out of the way and let employees and the evangelists do their thing. Positive feedback and incentives are obviously important. Choose wisely and try to link incentives to further improvements in sustainable waste performance e.g. use a percentage of savings in one area to fund other projects and another part for a celebration.
Make it visible
This is where the visual workplace comes into play once again. It should be easy for any employee to understand how their department and the company overall is performing against targets. This can be achieved via charts on notice boards, scorecards published in monthly or quarterly e-newsletter, blog posts etc. Make the metrics relative by expressing them in terms of £’s (or $’s) or by using benchmarks such as tonnes of waste per unit of production, hours of service, number of deliveries or whatever the relevant KPIs are for the business – refer to How to Choose KPI’s blog for ideas.
I’d be interested in your own stories of how you’ve engaged employees in the sustainable waste management journey within your business.