Your Bin, Your Responsibility
As part of your duty of care, it is any business owner’s responsibility to ensure that their outside business bins are thoroughly looked after. Owners need to make sure that their waste containers are clean, stored in a safe place, not overfilled, not broken, and that the correct waste is being put into them.
Cleaning Your Business Bins
You need to make sure that your bins are fairly clean. This does not mean that they need to be shining and polished every other day, it means that they should not be an eyesore for the public or be masked with a nasty smell from any spillages.
Furthermore, if you have labels on your business bins which identity what type of waste they hold, they need to be visible and so any dirt on them should be frequently removed.
Here is a company which cleans commercial bins if you wish to use an external service. We also have a really interesting blog post about how clean your bin is which you can read here.
Storing Your Business Bins
You should make sure that you have plenty of room to comfortably fit all of your business bins. The space you choose should be tucked away from the public, not obtrusive in any way, but accessible for your waste management servicer to be able to pick up your bin. If it is not accessible then it should be near to where you can wheel out your bin to an area which is accessible.
Ideally, you should also have a space that you can lock access to in order to prevent people from tampering with your waste containers.
Filling Up Your Business Bins
You should make sure that your bins are not overfilled and consequently overweight upon collection day. If you fail to do so then you will likely be charged an overweight bin fee.
To avoid this you should conduct a waste audit once a quarter (or whenever you expect changes to your waste production such as during the festive period). This audit will identify how much your business is throwing away between each collection and will indicate whether you need additional bins so that they do not overflow.
Common Mistakes And How To Resolve Them
One of the most common mistakes when it comes to looking after your company bins is that the wrong type of waste ends up in the wrong container. There are many reasons this may happen, it could be a genuine mistake or laziness or it could be something which is a lot easier to resolve.
It could be that you need to educate your employees on the importance of putting the right waste in the right place. To do this you should use the right communication channels such as in meetings, training, through company newsletters, emails and posters.
You should also make sure that your bins are clearly labelled so everyone knows which is the recycling bin and which is the general waste bin. Or, as we mentioned before, make sure that there is not any dirt on the bin labels.
If you need your waste taken care of then simply fill in the quick and easy quote form below to get a free quote.
