Balancing what you put into a business with what you’re able to get out of it is always one of the top concerns in the business world. After all, the more costs you incur, the harder it is to make a decent profit, as well as to focus on expanding business opportunities. With this in mind, it’s important to find green practices for businesses and find ways of reducing waste in the workplace.  

Wasteful use of materials, even if just from a lack of knowledge regarding how they could be better utilized, can lead to major costs piling up fast. No worries, though, as here we’ll go over some great ways to alter wasteful business practices so that you can start getting more out of what you invest in your business.

Business Analysis:

The best way to ensure that you cut back on as much waste as possible is to expose just how much waste is taking place and why. For this, you’re going to have to do a little analyzing of your business practices.  

Look over shipping methods, overall logisitcs, storage methods, production practices, and what you do with discarded materials. You may quickly find that the ordering/supply methods you’ve been using are no longer working for your business and need to be altered, or that you have a good amount of materials that are being thrown out when they could have been used in production.

Reevaluate Inventory:

It’s quite common for many companies to order too many supplies, raw materials, or finished products – or even not enough. This can become a major area of waste that leads to a lot of additional costs. To help cut down on this waste, you need to conduct regular inventory checks.  Don’t just perform a yearly inventory of all of your stock; perform checks on a quarterly basis.  If it’s clear that certain materials aren’t being used as much, or that particular goods aren’t selling, then you need to alter your orders and focus your investments elsewhere.

Practice the Three Rs:

“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” – very simple principles when you get down to it. Practicing this theory can majorly reduce costs, not only when it comes to ordering new goods and materials, but also in terms of your overhead. Being wiser and more creative with energy consumption and the way in which you use your facility’s space can contribute to reducing waste in the workplace as well as utility costs and lease expenses. 

It’s likely that you use products like storage bins, plastic containers, pallets, crates, and other items to either store or ship materials. Instead of having to constantly buy new products and then toss the old ones out, invest in used and new products from companies like Container Exchanger.  Here you can not only buy used products at more affordable prices, but even sell your old ones.  This way, you can make back some of the money you invested on the older products, while also cutting down on what goes into landfills.

Incentive Programs:

To help motivate employees in the reduction of workplace waste, start programs that reward them according to how much of a difference they’re able to make. You can offer individual rewards throughout the year to those who have managed to reduce the amount of money spent on new goods, or who have managed to find ways of reusing cast-off material. You could even create a year-end goal regarding how much you want to save on utilities, purchases, and so on, and promise a party or similar reward if the goal is met.