The current economy is making nearly everyone re-evaluate their expenditures and look for ways to improve their bottom line. Profit margins are tighter than ever and every step in the right direction makes a difference. Many businesses may be surprised to learn that they can improve their bottom line with single stream recycling containers.

Business is all about the bottom line. You can have the greatest product innovation, the most desirable service and a huge customer base and still lose money if your expenses exceed your income. It's basic Economics and there is no way to get around that simple law of financial physics.

As a manufacturing firm, overhead and variable costs must be closely monitored to maximize profit. One sizable expense that is often overlooked as having room for improvement is waste disposal and waste income.  Waste as income? In these days of expensive natural resources, waste is the new resource for many industries.

Instead Of Paying For Disposal, You Can Profit From Recycling

Trash collection and disposal can be prohibitively expensive. Not only does the process consume man hours, facility space and financial resources, trash collection and disposal is extremely wasteful (no pun intended). Virginia Mason Hospital, in Seattle, reports spending $20 per ton to recycle as opposed to $165 per ton for waste disposal simply by recycling half of their waste materials, for an annual savings of over $170,000!

Their project began with a simple request from environmentally-minded employees who requested recycling bins. Inexpensive recycling containers were brought in and the recycling began. Administrators realized very quickly that the conscientious use of recycling bins by their employees was resulting in increased income for the hospital! The minimal cost of renting bins for recycling was trivial in comparison to the savings, not to mention the public relations benefits.

Selecting Your Service Provider

Recycling has become big business and there is plenty of competition in the market. Gone are the days of unattractive 50-gallon drums overflowing with newspapers and plastic water bottles. What started as a grassroots environmental effort has become a multi-billion dollar business. You can order custom-designed recycling containers that match your use, your décor and your budget.

Regardless of the service provider you select, you will greatly reduce your waste disposal costs. However, when shopping for a recycling service provider, look for businesses that offer a variety of materials for your bins for recycling. Your recycling bins can be made from new plastic, recycled plastic "wood", steel or fiberglass. Recycling bins come in a wide range of sizes and your provider should offer recycling bins with an opening for each type of recyclable material.

Benefits Available To Many Business Types

The use of recycling bins can benefit nearly every type of business, academic or civic organization. Not only does recycling help maintain the livability of planet Earth for everyone, but recycling can significantly reduce waste collection and disposal costs while generating an income. Certainly a win-win situation for everyone, landfill use is reduced, costs are cut, profit is increased and good will expands many fold, both on and off the books.

Employing bins for recycling requires little to no extra space and increasing the ease with which employees can use recycling containers greatly increases participation rates, resulting in greater cost savings and increased income.

Recycling programs and environmental awareness have advanced by leaps and bounds in recent years. The effects humans can have on their environment and the amount of waste we generate on a yearly basis has come to light in a startling manner. Recycling programs, once relegated to small, far-off communities, has become the normal across the country and the world. Homes, businesses, and industries are embracing the recycling paradigm in a big way.

Business owners and operators are joining in by recycling their waste. Large companies are a big contributor to annual waste production and have implemented programs to rectify that problem. Growing companies are even better suited at integrating a recycling program as they can be more flexible in its implementation. Let’s investigate some of the specifics of implementing a recycling program from placing recycling containers to encouraging employees to embrace the green paradigm.

KISS - Keep It Short And Simple

A successful program should not complicate recycling. A hurdle to implementing such a program is that employees often find it too difficult or inconvenient to recycle their waste all the time. A busy department is going to be resistant if they have to affect their own productivity. The sales department is not going to put a potential client on hold just to hunt down recycling bins when they have to throw away an old memo.

Making recycling easy will engage employees to fully participate in the program. By making recycling have an appeal, staff will more easily come to embrace it. For example, attractive steel recycling containers can be placed in the workplace. Roll out carts and utility bins can be used in non-office settings like a warehouse. Another option would be to invest in nondescript fiberglass recycling containers and have them in each department.

Where Recycling Bins Should Be Placed

Since we are talking about the placement of recycling containers, having a good outline or floor plan will help a recycling program get off of its feet. Containers have to be convenient to use as well as easy to dump.

Good places are niches or recesses that are near wide doorways and halls. Recycling bins will need that room in order to maneuver when they need to be dumped. Having very small recycling containers in tight spots will quickly overflow and be a royal pain to clean out. Place a priority on stationing containers near the area where waste is being produced. For example, the mailroom and the office printer/copier/fax machine will be producing a lot of paper waste which typically accounts for the lion’s share of a business’s recyclable garbage. Also, keep in mind local regulations for keeping fire lanes and exits free and accessible.

Purchase Company Recycling Containers

Containers are available for renting, borrowing, or buying. Growing companies, and even larger companies on a strict budget, often find that the cost of buying recycling bins to be prohibitive. Thankfully, many municipalities offer incentive programs for owning a set of bins and more programs are added on a constant basis. Owning a set of recycling bins allows a company to personalize them with the company logo and slogan. In the long run, they will pay for themselves versus just renting and offer a lot more flexibility.

Drafting A Formal Policy

It can be a touchy subject when considering creating a recycling program and making participation mandatory. Sometimes the firm approach can have the opposite effect. A well written office policy, however, can deflect those issues and allow for a more fluid implementation.

Instead of directly mandating participation, creating an office policy that indirectly encourages recycling is a good step. Emphasizing the benefits of recycling programs and pointing out the absurdly high levels of waste that Americans produce can be more persuasive than a simple order. Another option would be to explain the recycling program to show how easy it is, reducing resistance to participation. An inventive approach can work wonders.

In the end, the reality is that it's simple to incorporate recycling bins in your company. Encouraging employee participation will come naturally with a solid recycling plan. At the end of the day, an easy recycling program will engage employees all by itself.

Equipment such as hardhats, respirators or safety gloves might someday be all that stands between a worker and serious injury. The correct PPE, the training to use it and a comprehensive safety program are each components of personal protective equipment implementation as laid out in a 40 hour HAZWOPER program.

The Right Equipment

The first step is to choose the proper PPE for the worker and the job. OSHA has minimum requirements for PPE that must be met and these guidelines are laid out in 40 hour HAZWOPER training. For example the equipment must be durable, capable of being disinfected and be marked only to identify the manufacturer. Equipment that doesn't meet OSHA specifications should not be used.

The PPE should be appropriate to the job. Issuing dust masks to employees who need full respirators is not an appropriate response. If a job requires respirators, then that is the equipment that should be used. PPE should be issued with a worst case viewpoint. It's not about the incident that will happen; it's about the incident that might happen.

The Right Training

Employees must be properly trained in the use of the PPE. A 40-hour HAZWOPER course is part of this training but doesn't take the place of hands on sessions with equipment on the job site. Some employers are under the mistaken impression that face to face 40 hour HAZWOPER training is better than online training because they don't need a hands-on session when the employee returns to work, but OSHA guidelines say workers must train with the actual equipment they will use not just the equipment used in a course. This is a site-specific training requirement -  using the actual equipment an employee will be using in their job.

Site-specific training drills ensure that workers know how to put on, use and take off the equipment. It verifies that equipment is fitted correctly and all seals are intact. Training should also include proper maintenance of the PPE, including a regular program of inspection and replacement.

The Right Program

PPE is one component in an array of tools designed to keep workers safe. The 40-hour HAZWOPER course is only a piece of a comprehensive safety plan that includes engineering controls, manufacturing practices, passive protection and more. PPE is an important element in the program but should be the defense of last resort in case of contamination or accident.

Organizations dealing with hazardous waste are trying to balance OSHA requirements for HAZWOPER certification with reduced revenues and shrinking budgets. Many are turning to online HAZWOPER courses as the solution to this dilemma. Lower course fees, reduced travel expenses and less lost production add up to major savings.

Online Courses Cost Less

Typically online HAZWOPER certification programs cost less than traditional face-to-face training. The training provider's costs are lower since they don't have to print written materials, rent a venue to give the course or invest in expensive presentation equipment. Administration and delivery of online material incurs fewer expenses and these savings are passed on to the clients.

To be fair some of the savings of online courses is offset by the need for the clients to provide some hands-on training with personal protective equipment to meet OSHA standards. However the cost of a brief PPE session with employees who have completed online HAZWOPER certification will be far less than the savings realized by adopting an online training program.

No Traveling Required

The cost of attending remote training in person involves more than just the price of the courses themselves. The expenses associated with airline tickets, hotel stays, rental cars, per diems and other factors inflate the training budget well beyond course fees. When workers get their HAZWOPER certification online there is no need to travel. They take the courses on any computer at work or at home without incurring additional expenses.

The absence of travel does more than save money; it makes employees happier. Since workers don't have to be away from their homes for a week or longer attending a class on the other side of the country, they find it easier to balance professional and personal commitments.

Improved Productivity

A less tangible but still important economic benefit of online training comes from the increased productivity it creates. Employees take individual course modules at their convenience. If important issues arise, workers can deal with them before returning to the course. This makes it easier to balance training need with day to day work.

A typical 40 hour HAZWOPER involves far more than 40 hours of lost productivity. Time lost to travel and other incidentals increases this by a large factor. In an online course, employees spend just as much time as is needed to complete the requirements and no more. Training time is spent efficiently and employees get back to work as soon as the course is over.

Since workers set their own pace they can stop the course when they become tired rather than having to push on until the instructor calls for a break. They learn when they are most alert and absorb the information more efficiently. This means less review and faster completion of the full course.

Online HAZWOPER certification is growing in popularity as organizations realize the financial benefits it brings. Soon it may be the rule rather than the exception in HAZWOPER education.

Organizations dealing with hazardous waste are trying to balance OSHA requirements for HAZWOPER certification with reduced revenues and shrinking budgets. Many are turning to online HAZWOPER courses as the solution to this dilemma. Lower course fees, reduced travel expenses and less lost production add up to major savings.

Equipment such as hardhats, respirators or safety gloves might someday be all that stands between a worker and serious injury. The correct PPE, the training to use it and a comprehensive safety program are each components of personal protective equipment implementation as laid out in a 40 hour HAZWOPER program.