This week is National Recycling Week so it seems like the perfect time to share how the IQ office is going with our waste free office concept. The idea first came to me when I saw this image on Instagram which is someone’s rubbish for four whole years!
When I first pitched this to the team I was not met with enthusiasm however they are pretty used to my crazy ideas and how they often work out in the end (if I do say so myself.)
Back in March when I first started talking about this, I felt like I’d done a fair bit of ground work. I had researched compost bins, found highlighter pencils, made a plan for waste paper, become aware of the issues with reusable coffee cups and found the app Recycle Smart.
We set a start date for July 1 because as Accountants, this just made logical sense. There was a sense of hesitation and excitement (mostly mine.) We worked together to reduce our rubbish and waste by examining everything we were doing in the office. Being a fully digital and paperless office, we don’t have an overly huge output in that area so we focused on other areas. We arranged to swap over our hand towel in the bathroom to washable hand cloth. We were already using this company for toilet paper but found they were able to provide paper towel as well. Renae found that we were able to send our coffee pods to be recycled using one of the terracycle programs.
The best way that we were able to measure our rubbish reduction was by counting the number of rubbish bags we remove from the office each Friday. We used to do 3 full large black rubbish bags plus recycling. Now we are barely emptying rubbish bins…..there’s just not anything in them. Everything is recycled, composted or put in reusable containers. We all had to change our mind set to make this happen and I am so proud of the entire IQ team who have really embraced this change. #goteam
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