Sustainability Tips That Can Benefit the Environment – Revisited

‘Green” is a topic very much in vogue these days, whether it’s being showcased in commercials, in magazine or newspaper ads, or in specialty news segments that either showcase exemplary cases or future ticking toxic ‘time bombs”, such as the recent segment on CBS’s “60 Minutes” featuring how e-wastes that are supposed to be recycled are finding their way to remote parts of China where the electronic components arr burned off for their precious metal contents.

While we as consumers have very little control over environmental and health and safety issues related to the transboundary shipment of banned hazardous waste – save writing to our political leaders to voice our opposition to e-wate recyclers that operate in this fashion – we can control our own waste streams in some degree, whether at work or at home.

For those of you who work at a plant or office complex, does your organization have a recycling program in place to recycle select solid waste products, such as paper, cardboard, glass, plastic, co-mingled, wood and metals?  What about food and landscape wastes? 

If not, does your company allow employees to suggest such programs to benefit the company?

Also, if you are located in a region that needs to have snow removal equipment, does your maintenance department store salt in a location that allows saline runoff to enter the local waterway, or is the salt covered in some fashion?

On a different scale, does your company have in place any incentive programs to foster other sustainability initiatives, such as cash bonuses for commuting alternative options?

More in our next installment.