When it comes to waste management, one of the most common strategies employed by businesses in South Africa, involves the disposal of their waste to landfills.
However, although this may have historically been a fairly sound strategy, it should no longer be seen as a sustainable approach.
Globally, and within South Africa, there is an increasing scarcity in landfill space, which is seeing steadily increasing costs for organisations to utilise landfills.
Beyond the pure numbers though, waste to landfills are not adequate disposal methods for many industries. Not adequately disposing of waste can be both an environmental and reputational risk for a business.
Off-spec or faulty product could easily make its way back into the market, not to mention the health risks in contaminated waste finding its way out of the landfill.
It’s also not environmentally sustainable, and in today’s world of active citizenship, organisations are moving away from this as their primary waste management solution.
Traditional landfill and incineration waste management strategies produce greenhouse and landfill gas, can cause greater energy consumption, and is an inefficient use of materials if recyclable waste is not being separated before combustion or disposal.
For most industries then, the traditional landfill approach isn’t a suitable, long term strategy.
So what should your organisation be looking to do?
These days, high performing organisations have comprehensive, holistic waste management strategies in place, encompassing a variety of key principles.
These include:
Waste prevention initiatives – relooking at their processes to ensure that gaps or inefficiencies that may cause waste are addressed and rectified.
Waste minimisation – using products and services that generates the least amount of waste / reduces the toxicity of the resultant waste.
Recycling and recovery interventions – adopting the “circular economy” model, where waste is recycled, recovered and repurposed into energy and resources that can actually feed back into the business.
Waste treatment processes – effective industry specific treatment to separate the waste from materials that can then be repurposed into a re-usable resource.
Landfill – Once all the above principals have been actioned, whatever cannot be suitably recovered is then taken to a landfill. Studies have shown that with the interventions above in place, waste to landfill can be reduced by up to 70%.
A final word
We hope you found this quick guide useful, and it’s made you rethink your reliance on using landfills as a primary waste management solution.
If you have any questions on the above, or you need any assistance with your waste management, we’d love to help.
At Oricol, we help large organisations like yours, helping them better manage their industrial and commercial waste, reducing their reliance on landfills, and helping them become more efficient and environmentally sustainable in their waste management processes.
In a nutshell – we give you peace of mind, helping you to better manage and process your waste.
We’d like to offer you a free consult chat, where we can discuss how your organisation currently manages waste, together with any challenges you might be facing.
It’s a complimentary, no obligation chat, and it can help you quickly make an informed decision on what you should be looking to do, to make your business more efficient and sustainable.
So if you’d like to move your organisation into a more sustainable and eco-friendly space, or if you’re just curious at this stage and would like to know more, just click the button below and choose a convenient day and time for our call.
All it’s going to cost you is 30 mins of your time, and could ultimately make a huge difference to your business.
