‘Super mini’ green fashion for office bins: smart waste management innovation
For a whole week I felt a certain discomfort when I trashed my papers.On Thursday, I suddenly realized what was the reason: the standard office trash bins were significantly reduced in size.
Green office mini trash bin
I talked with the guy from our partner company; he was drinking big Tim Horton’s coffee cup. When he finished his coffee, he started looking for the trash bin appropriate for his cup that seemed looked like a giant compare to the tiny bins. That moment I noticed that the new design of our trash collection system became not just ‘mini’, but ’super mini’.
The first step to greener the office was done in the beginning of 2007 when blue recycling bin were put at the copier and printer locations.
6 month later we were presented the new office rules that were aimed to reduce number of copies employees make, such as writing notes on the back of once-used paper, sending e-mail or voice message instead of writing a note on the paper. After that people definitely paid more attention to what they print. After my 15 years of office experience I got tired to see hundreds of wasted sheets that went to the printer simply by mistake.
And now, mini trash bins. I think the idea behind this action is to make people more responsible for their trash.
I can’t say that they were gladly accepted by everyone in the office, and some people were sarcastically curious about how they can manage to fit all their trash in these super small bins. Also, some confusion came from the people who did not clearly identify what can be recycled and what can’t. The fact that the senior management have big old size bins was not encouraging too. The management got complains.
The great help in implementing of this idea was a proper communication with detailed explanations of all benefits of recycling and overall waste reduction, presenting of well-explained recycling rules and clear designation between recycling and trash bins. The same day the communication was issued, the trash bins in the management places were replaced by the ‘minis’ as well.
The only point that could do this project even more successful was to issue the communication slightly ahead of implementation, then people would be ready to accept it easier.
Super mini fashion for office bins
Personally, I still felt a little bit of discomfort during the next week, but then new habits took place.
In two months, our management congratulated us for the percentage of recycling in our office dramatically went up after the introduction of the ‘mini’ bins.
I think that environmental concerns were not the only source for their enthuisiazm, but quite a bit of cost saving ideas standed behind: smart green solution resulted in two benefits.
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I’ve heard that mini office bins were implemented in some office in Toronto and Mississauga. What i like here is obvious cost saving for the company goes together with environment care.
I think they went to these smaller ones because people are basically lazy, and this way they could make sure this stuff was going to the right place