Grr!

hannoja

Can't stand waste.
Rescued two tins from bin at work yesterday.
Got looked at like I'd just raided the bins for my dinner!

flutterbyuk25

I totally agree with you. I work for large govt agency with over 1000 people in my building and the recycling facilities are useless. There is the odd can bin dotted about. But nothing for plastic bottles which we must get through thousands a week (it's a call centre). I suggested a plastic bottle recycling scheme, and was told it was not feasible as nowhere in our county can take the recycling. The local council tip which is a 2 minute drive away recycles plastic bottles!!! Arghh!! It's like banging your head against a brick wall.

And don't get me started on the numpties who walk past the paper recycling bin to put their paper in the rubbish bin!

Rant over.

HugoSP

Where I used to work we had the opposite problem in that some people tried to recycle everything.

An example, one of my colleagues used to read a broadsheet every day and always put it in the paper recycling.

Every day the chap came around to collect the recycling and turfed the broadsheet out, as it was the wrong grade!

Having said that we were quite good on the whole, we even had a dedicated printer to reuse non confidential photocopy/printer waste - great for printing agendas etc for meetings, drafts etc.

Seakay

What company do you work for?
Contact them (or the parent company, if appropriate)
A lot of companies want to achieve or retain Investment In People status
http://www.investorsinpeople.co.uk/Pages/Home.aspx
in many ways a box ticking exercise, but hey, to get or keep the award those boxes have to be ticked! Getting employees involved in the company or the company involved in the community is all part of it.
Even if your company isn't involved in IIP then I find that it is often the high ups in a company which are interested in schemes that are slightly wider in scope than the day to day business.
Put your proposition with all the back up information which you can get together (if someone will collect, if it will cost or pay, what the benefits for the company are, other ideas on green lines eg, work out how much electricity will be saved if all monitors are switched off when they are not being used, if a water machine could be installed to save on plastic bottle waste )

mazza1970

We have recycling bins on each floor where I work for paper, cans and plastic. We have also started using recycled paper and our letter headed paper has the recycling logo on it so everyone know our company is commited to it.

If we don't recycle and just put everything in the normal rubbish bin, you get really told off:p

ScratchandSniff-->[X]

I'm sorry but I really must disagree with the IiP suggestion in so far as it is implemented in the public sector.

If there is something that creates more paper and diverts more useful resources from front-line services than IiP then I have yet to see it. There is absolutely diddly squat benefit to the general public (or customers of a business) to have IiP. The only people it benefits are under-capable management who get a nice big pay increase for having a plaque on the wall. Getting employees involved means being deluged by highly biased surveys, half-day managements spiels to entire directorates, and getting dragged off to an interview where you have to say what the Managers want you to say or there's a witch hunt and they find a convenient way of losing your services.

Recycling office paper and disposable cups is admirable (although collecting it is only half the story - what actually happens to the stuff?), but pails into insignificance to the waste of money and effort being spent on multiple tiers of management who deliver no useful end function and get in the way of the workers who actually have a service to render.

YMMV of course )

trainee_debt_buster

In the last year or so I've started taking home all my recycleables as there were no facilities in my old office. At first I was looked at like I was a hobo by some of my colleagues but then people started to comment that they wished it was easier to recycle things so I offered to take everyone else's recycling for them.

I put a box in the office, with a note of what I could recycle and stating that things needed to be washed out, and took the recycling home every day. When I was offered a new job, I had several of my colleagues bustling for the vacancy of chief recycler when I left.

I now ride my bike to work and am unable to lug everyone else's recycling home each day, however, I still make the effort to bring my own things home and have noticed that several of my colleagues now do the same. The office administator has even made enquiries into getting extra recycling bins so I don't have to take my rubbish home.

Keep at it and hopefully your actions will help someone else to think about their own (and if not, atleast you know you doing something useful)

:j:T:j