Improving waste managementA how-to guide for business groups

2Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Business consultation 6

3. Developing a baseline: understanding the issues and identifying the 7 opportunities

4. Pinpointing individual business opportunities 9

5. Identifying collaborative opportunities 12

5.1 Preferred supplier procurement 13

5.2 Co-operation between businesses 19

6. Monitoring and evaluation 23

7. List of tools and templates 24

Resource Efficient Scotland is a programme from

Zero Waste Scotland. Our free support to business

is funded by the Scottish Government and by the

European Regional Development Fund through the

£73 million Resource Efficiency Circular Economy

Accelerator Programme.

3Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

1. Introduction

Who is this guide for?This guide is aimed at organisations working with businesses, within a defined geographical area, to develop and deliver waste management projects which improve the local economy and the wider community. These organisations include:

• Business Improvement Districts (BIDS);• Federation for Small Businesses• Chambers of Commerce;• traders associations;• industry associations; and• other local business support groups.

For these organisations, the production and management of trade waste is constantly highlighted as a key issue of concern. To help address this concern, this guide provides simple, yet effective, advice on how to identify and implement waste reduction opportunities in businesses of all sizes.

We’ll take you through the steps of collecting and analysing waste data from businesses; help you to identify and prioritise opportunities for action; and provide you with lots of useful tools, templates and further guidance along the way to turn opportunities into reality.

4Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

Why engage with businesses to improve waste management?

To improve the streetscene

Having lots of large commercial bins on the street can be unattractive, deter potential visitors to the area and is a potential public health risk. Therefore, better overall management of waste can make an area safer and more attractive, increase footfall and improve economic performance. It can also create a more pleasant and vibrant atmosphere for the whole community.

To reduce their costs and improve environmental performance

On average, Scottish businesses spend £7,000 a year on waste. No business wants to spend more than necessary on anything, so introducing ways of preventing or reducing waste generation at source will always be popular. Business groups can often be ideally placed to help individual businesses identify potential cost saving opportunities and develop improved practices, such as better source segregation of recyclable materials.

To minimise contamination

Bins left within easy public access will inevitably be used by people as they pass by – often depositing things that are not meant for that bin. This can result in businesses failing to comply with legislation and increasing their costs.

To support compliance with local policies

More and more local authorities are introducing specific waste management arrangements, such as presenting bins for collection only within certain timeframes. Your support can be invaluable in helping businesses to understand these policies and optimising the efficiency of their waste management practices to minimise their environmental impact.

To coordinate waste services

Many of Scotland’s villages, towns and cities have an array of different trade-waste service providers and collection schedules. This can cause logistical and environmental issues. Helping businesses work together to rationalise the way waste is managed across the area can go a long way to solving these issues and modernising the way waste is managed.

Because they’re busy and need your help

A lot of businesses aren’t aware of some of the simple steps they can take to improve their waste management – and they don’t have the time to commit to developing them. This guide is here to help you to help them and deliver lasting benefits to everyone in the area.

5Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

The Waste Scotland Regulations 2012

The Waste (Scotland) Regulations have been in effect since 1 January 2014.

In Scotland, if an organisation generates any of the items listed below as waste, then they must present them for recycling:

• glass (including drinks bottles and rinsed food jars);• metal (including rinsed cans and tins);• plastic (including drinks bottles and rinsed food containers);• paper; and• cardboard.

Food businesses (such as cafés, restaurants and other premises preparing or selling food) that produce over 5kg food waste per week, must also present food waste separately for collection. Exclusions are in place for businesses in rural locations. You can check whether your area is excluded by using the rural postcode finder.

As well as these key principles of the regulations, all businesses in Scotland, as part of their waste management practices, are required to take reasonable steps to avoid waste being contaminated and to apply the waste hierarchy.

Prevention

Prepare for reuse

Recycle

Recover other value

Disposal

The waste hierarchy

Improving waste management - a guide for business groups 6

2. Business consultation

Making time to engage with your businesses is a vital first step in any successful project or campaign. There can be several significant strategic benefits if you incorporate waste management considerations into your existing regular business consultation activities or embark upon discussions specific to the topic.

These benefits include:

• providing the opportunity to understand what the key issues and motives are for the businesses you represent;

• building your relationship with your businesses by showing that you value their opinions and want to understand the issues they face;

• serving as a barometer for the businesses’ appetite to understand and develop improvement opportunities;

• helping you to judge the seriousness of any issues and begin to form early prioritisation plans;

• providing the opportunity to discuss some of the local opportunities that might not otherwise come to light; and

• helping you to begin to recognise the potential for collaboration between businesses.

The results of this communication with your businesses should form the basis of your underlying objectives for any activity that follows. Any actions or tasks you plan to take should be considered in this context and confirmed to contribute to the big-picture aim of helping your businesses with the issues that mean the most to them.

7Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

3. Developing a baseline: understanding the issues and identifying the opportunities

Gaining a thorough understanding of the current situation is the best way to begin improving the management and reducing the cost of anything. After your initial discussions with the businesses in your group, collating a waste arisings baseline will help you begin to identify the type and scale of collaborative waste reduction opportunities you might be able to take forward.

Some useful data might already exist, from local authority surveys or other previous baselining exercises, so it’s always worthwhile engaging with any contacts you may have to find out what information is already out there. If there is nothing readily available or if there are gaps you would like to fill, then you’ll need to conduct your own baseline survey.

Online surveys can be conducted to gather these sort of data, with businesses e-mailed to invite them to participate. However, typically, these yield very low response rates. As such, there is real value in taking the time to complete your surveys either over the phone or face-to-face. As most businesses won’t have a lot of time to spare, it may be worthwhile arranging appointments

beforehand to ensure you can speak to the members of staff who will have access to the information you want – and time to talk to you about it. You could also leave the survey sheets with the businesses for them to complete, and arrange a time to collect them back in.

A good survey will aim to gather the following core information:

• business name and key contact details;• estimated size of business (e.g. number of tables for restaurants/cafes and floor area for

retail businesses/offices);• details of waste collections:

− estimating the quantity of waste: › number of bins/containers; › size of bins/containers; › uplift frequency; and › estimate of how full the bins are when collected;

− collection services used; − waste contractor(s) used; and − cost of service.

It is really important to try to get figures for all four items in the waste quantity estimate part of the survey. Only with that full set of data will you be able to calculate a numerical baseline for the waste arisings across the businesses you have surveyed. This is another occasion where there is value in giving the business some time to think about your survey and collate the information required beforehand.

TopTip

We’re here to help

We’ve developed a standard template survey questionnaire and spreadsheet for you to tailor to your own needs. They give you the basics you’ll need to start gathering and analysing your data.

• Survey questionnaire• Baseline spreadsheet

8Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

Carrying out this type of survey also provides the opportunity to gather more qualitative information about the current waste management practices and challenges of the businesses within your group. This will enable you to identify examples of good practice that may be worth sharing or expanding and to gain a deeper understanding of any common issues that you may be able to help address.

Examples of the kinds of things you could ask about include:

• Key types of raw materials used by the business, including packaging materials – to enable options for materials exchange to be identified;

• any general issues associated with waste management;• collaboration opportunities;• details of any supplier take-back engagement – materials returned to suppliers (e.g.

pallets, containers and cooking oil);• examples of neighbouring businesses using shared waste services or infrastructure;• details of the types of extra services businesses would appreciate from waste

contractors; and• any other measures or processes used by businesses to minimise waste arisings, such as

portion control or menu planning for food businesses.

Analysis of your collated data will provide information on:

• waste arisings;• costs;• carbon emissions associated with the management of waste; and• estimated level of compliance with the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012.

You’re now prepared to begin identifying and prioritising waste management improvement opportunities by taking a more in-depth look at the data gathered, and developing an action and engagement plan.

Waste stream collected General waste Dry mixed recyclables

Paper and card Glass Plastics Cans Food Total

Number of businesses with collection

42 23 9 28 2 3 21 –

Estimated annual weight of material (tonnes)

351 55 36 450 18 8 194 1,108

Collection composition (% of total)

32% 5% 3% 40% 2% 1% 17% -

Table 1: Example simple data analysis findings

9Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

4. Pinpointing individual business opportunities

The most valuable things you can do to support the businesses within your group are:

• help them to identify improvements they could make individually; and• act as a conduit for further assistance or guidance that might be available.

This section gives an example of how you can use information you have gathered to start that process, highlights some of the common waste prevention opportunities for businesses, and provides signposts to some of the further guidance and support available from Resource Efficient Scotland.

As well as summarising the total waste arisings and collection service data as discussed in section 3, you can now use your data to begin investigating useful statistics, such as the breakdown of waste across different waste streams for individual businesses. An example of this is shown in Table 2.

Business type

Business name

General waste (%)

Dry mixed recyclables (%)

Paper and card (%)

Glass (%)

Food waste (%)

Restaurant Business 1 26% 0% 0% 0% 74%

Business 2 18% 0% 9% 0% 73%

Business 3 24% 11% 0% 22% 43%

Business 4 30% 13% 0% 8% 49%

Business 5 34% 16% 0% 25% 25%

Café Business 6 63% 18% 0% 0% 19%

Business 7 38% 18% 0% 15% 29%

Business 8 32% 11% 0% 0% 57%

Bar/pub Business 9 25% 0% 8% 45% 22%

Business 10 21% 0% 11% 68% 0%

Business 11 47% 11% 0% 21% 21%

Business 12 35% 0% 0% 65% 0%

Business 13 35% 0% 13% 52% 0%

Table 2: Example breakdown of waste stream for individual businesses

10Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

By comparing the data for similar types of business in this format, you can start to spot potential areas where there’s room for improvement. It’s important to remember that there could be a valid reason for these differences and it might not be down to poor practices. However, identifying differences and anomalies between businesses will help target areas for follow-up. For example:

• Businesses 1 and 2 have a much higher proportion of food waste than all of the others in the survey. There’s potential to engage with these businesses in more depth to discuss how they manage their food waste, why these differences may occur and investigate waste prevention options.

• Businesses 10 and 13 have no separate food waste collection, potentially signifying that, unless they are producing less than 5kg per week (one small domestic kitchen caddy), they are not compliant with the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012.

• Businesses 1, 2, 6 and 8 appear to have no separate glass collections, which is surprising for these types of businesses and worth further investigation.

• Business 6 has a significantly higher proportion of general waste than any other business shown here. This means there is the potential to engage with the business to discuss its waste management processes, and try to find ways to improve segregation of wastes and recycling rates.

As can be seen from this simple analysis of collated information, several opportunities naturally present themselves for individual businesses to improve their waste management practices and drive down their costs. Other common waste prevention measures that may be suitable for your businesses, organised into the reduce, reuse, recycle hierarchy could include:

Reduce• food waste prevention opportunities, such as:

− portion control; − menu design; − stock control and order monitoring; − offering a take-home service for leftovers, such as Zero Waste Scotland’s Good to Go − boxes; and − redistribution of surplus food;

• Eliminating single-use plastics such as straws, cups and cutlery;• engaging with suppliers to investigate re-usable packaging or packaging take-back options;• changing office printer settings to print double sided where possible and in greyscale rather than colour; and• introducing sustainable procurement principles – specify durable and recyclable products.

Reuse• introducing a policy to repair or refurbish furniture and equipment;• providing sugar bowls, bottles of sauce, and salt and paper cellars rather than single-use

sachets;• Using refillable glass bottles or jugs for water instead of selling bottled water; and• reusing staff uniforms when employees move on.

Recycle• clearly defining recycling responsibilities amongst staff;• using clear, unambiguous signage on bins to make it easy for staff to use them correctly; and• improving source segregation and enable better recycling by rationalising

bin arrangement

11Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

Case study

Hot savings made at two gourmet Indian restaurantsImproved stock management and portion control could cut food waste and save significant amounts of money at Bapu Hospitality’s two Glasgow-based restaurants

Resource Efficient Scotland’s food waste experts visited both restaurants and recommended a series of waste prevention measures, and worked with management and staff to help develop the ideas further.

“The workshop helped us to identify and discuss practical ways to optimise portion control to reduce food waste. One of the key ideas we took away to reduce plate food waste is a focus on customer feedback” says Navdeep Bas, Bapu Hospitality.

Read the case study online

We’re here to help

Resource Efficient Scotland has a large range of free tools, guides and support to help individual businesses reduce their waste. Our technical advisers and specialists are on standby to help small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) implement meaningful change and achieve serious savings.

Our free advice and support service provides:

• a resource efficiency review that identifies where and how savings can be made; and• a comprehensive report that is written for the individual business detailing key

actions that could be taken to reduce resource use, and how to access further support, advice and financing.

Alongside this in-depth technical support, businesses can download and tailor the following tools and guides from our website:

• Waste prevention plan template;• Save money on waste – Advice and support for organisations in Scotland;• Raw materials and waste tracking spreadsheet;• How to reduce food waste in the hospitality and food service sector;• How to reduce food waste in manufacturing;• Surplus food redistribution guide and supporting resources.• Create your own signage and posters

12Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

5. Identifying collaborative opportunities

In this section, we’re going to describe some of the key common opportunities for improving waste management and waste prevention; and help you prioritise, plan and implement them in a sustainable and lasting way.

Plan to succeedCapturing all your opportunities in a group action plan document is a powerful and effective way to detail the individual tasks involved and keep track of progress.

The opportunities highlighted in the following pages may present themselves through your initial business consultation activities or analysis of the numerical data collected during your baselining exercise, or they could be highlighted in a business’s responses to the more qualitative questions you have asked. The next step is to engage further with the businesses, either on a 1-2-1 basis or at a public workshop or meeting.

The opportunities can be discussed and key actions identified to progress them. These actions can include determining the content of conversations to have with key stakeholders – such as your local council or waste management sector – or researching specific technical aspects of projects. Assigning those actions to named individuals and setting a date by which they will be completed gives them ownership and minimises the risk of missing opportunities.

Your action plan should include:

• summary details for the group: − geographical area; − number of businesses; and − type of businesses – split by sector.

• summary of data analysis from baselining exercise; and• opportunities identified for further development:

− actions required to progress the project: › what is the desired outcome of this action? › who will do it? › when will it be done by? › is any further support required? › what is the follow-on action from this one?

As the final item in this list suggests, your group action plan should be a living document, with each completed action leading to the next step in the process, driving you all the way to turning potential into reality.

We’re here to help

We’ve created a simple group action plan template. This will help you tailor and keep track of your own opportunities and the major tasks to complete to make them happen.

As we discuss each of the waste management improvement opportunities in this section, we’ll highlight some of the key actions to include in your plan to get started.

Group action plan

13Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

5.1 Preferred supplier procurementCollective purchasing enables a group of businesses to procure waste services with much greater bargaining power than they can by acting individually. It offers a powerful opportunity to negotiate discounted prices, more coherent and rationalised services, and a robust monitoring and reporting regime. The co-ordination of waste and recycling collections across several businesses within a specific geographical area can also:

• reduce the, often significant, environmental impact of vehicles on the streets; and • ease the traffic-related logistical constraints of town and city centres.

As businesses are free to choose whichever supplier they prefer, a business group will not, in general, be able to guarantee a set number of customers to the preferred supplier. However, in return for a coherent and cost-efficient service, your group can offer the supplier localised marketing support and the reassurance that comes with them having gone through a robust and structured selection process.

The majority of groups making use of this guide will not be duty-bound to adhere to public procurement regulations, but adopting similar principles and processes will ensure transparency, integrity, openness and competition.

There are several steps involved in running a comprehensive procurement exercise, but following each in a logical, consistent way should guarantee a successful result. The major steps are:

• developing invitation to tender (ITT) documents;• market engagement;• finalising ITT documents;• launch;• evaluation; and• award.

We have created a suite of tools and templates to help you develop the important documents for a procurement exercise and outlined below the main considerations for each of the steps.

We’re here to help

These tools and templates will help you build the pack of documents required to deliver a successful procurement exercise. They include simple instructions on how to tailor them to your own requirements and ensure a high-quality and competitive process. [links to:

• ITT documents;• market engagement slides;• pricing schedule;• stage 1 evaluation spreadsheet;• stage 2 scoring spreadsheet;• preferred supplier agreement template (developed for Resource Efficient

Scotland by Capital Law); and• procurement decision letters.

14Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

5.1.1 Develop ITT documents

ITT documents are the collection of documents you will issue to suppliers that you want to submit a proposal for providing a service. They should be drafted before any potential market engagement exercise you undertake and finalised afterwards, incorporating any relevant feedback received.

It is important that the ITT contains all the information and detail needed to enable a potential supplier to compile a fully formed tender for the service. The following are the key parts of the document:

• information pack;• specification;• service delivery plan;• key performance indicators (KPIs);• pricing schedule;• evaluation methodology; and• preferred suppliers agreement.

Information pack

To support the procurement process and market engagement, a fundamental element is the development of an ‘information pack’. This should be prepared prior to the market engagement day so that suppliers understand the make-up and requirements of your group, the proposed service and the key dates for the procurement process.

The more information the pack includes, the more informed potential suppliers will be. A lot of the information included can be taken from your analysis of results from your baselining exercise or any existing waste service data available.

A pack can include:

• a map of the area the supplier will be bidding to service;• types of business requiring the service;• any policies or strategies that the business improvement district has (e.g. sustainability policy);• waste arisings;• waste composition;• types of container in use; and• procurement timetable.

Specification

The specification sets out your minimum requirements for waste management services. It is where you tell the suppliers what you want from them.

It should cover:

• waste management services;• contingency arrangements;• sustainability;• marketing and promotions; and• contract management and reporting.

To keep the ITT and associated documents as secure as possible, you should protect and lock all parts of them except those where you want bidders to enter information. This can be done by issuing documents in portable document format (PDF) where possible or protecting certain cells and worksheets in spreadsheet documents.

TopTip

15Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

Service delivery plan

As part of their tender, bidders are required to submit a comprehensive service delivery plan. This will be used when evaluating tenders and will form part of the final legal agreement between you and the successful bidder. It should be laid out using the same structure as your specification section and is the bidder’s description of how what you have asked for is going to be delivered.

Key performance indicators

These are the performance statistics you will ask the successful bidder(s) to report on as part of the contract management, which will help you assess how well the service is being delivered. KPIs could include:

• percentage of waste recovered and recycled;• number of missed collections;• number of businesses signed up to the service; and• customer satisfaction ratings.

Bidders should propose target figures to meet for these KPIs (e.g. ‘Maximum of five collections missed for every 100 collections’ or ‘Average customer satisfaction score of 90% or above from feedback surveys’).

The successful contractor’s reporting on progress towards these targets will allow you to structure and prioritise discussions in regular review meetings. This will help you to focus on areas of concern and strive towards continual improvement of the services offered to your businesses.

Pricing schedule

This is where the bidders will lay out how much the service will cost for businesses. It should allow them to detail costs for the supply of bins or other containers and costs per collection.

Not all suppliers will provide the same type and size of container, so it can be tricky to assess this in a fair and uniform way. We suggest using your collected baseline data to estimate an approximate number of annual collections for each bin type.

All prices supplied by bidders can be mapped to this estimate so that an annual base price can be calculated for each bidder for evaluation purposes. In cases where a certain target bin size is not provided, the price can be calculated based on a combination of other bins.

For example, where a 1,100-litre bin is not provided in the uplift cost, the price for a 660-litre and a 360-litre bin will be calculated. If there is only an uplift cost for a 660-litre bin, then the cost will be based on 2 x 660-litre bins.

This can be quite a complex estimation exercise to carry out. To help you with this, the pricing schedule template we have developed contains examples of annual bin quantity estimates for large, medium and small-scale groups, and instructions on how to apply the appropriate estimates.

You may also want to ask bidders to offer an economy-of-scale discount dependent on the number of businesses that eventually sign up. For example, you could ask them to give a percentage discount to all customers for every 100 customers secured.

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Evaluation methodology

It is important to clearly inform the bidders about how you are going to evaluate their submissions. You need to decide what your priorities are for the resulting service and apply percentage weightings to the different criteria you want to evaluate. We suggest having a two-tier criteria system, structured as shown in Table 3. The Tier 1 criteria of price and quality are then further divided and weighted, depending on your priorities for the different elements as set out in the specification and pricing schedule. The percentages we have included here are purely for illustration purpose, and should be adapted to fully reflect your own preferences.

Preferred supplier agreement

This is the legal document which, when combined with the successful bidder’s service delivery plan and pricing schedule, will form the contract between the bidder and your group. It should be included as part of the ITT documents, but certain parts will remain open for discussion with the successful bidder after evaluation.

It will form a binding contract and, as such, you need to be certain it represents accurately your wishes for the relationship. The preferred supplier agreement template provided with this guide was developed for Zero Waste Scotland by Capital Law LLP and we strongly recommend that you take independent legal advice before including it in your own procurement process.

Tier 1 Tier 2

Quality50%

Organisational details Not scored

Waste collection and treatment services (recycling and residual waste service or food waste service)

15%

Contingency arrangements 10%

Sustainability 7.5%

Marketing and promotions 7.5%

Contract management and reporting 10%

Price50%

Estimated base price 35%

Discounted price (per 100 customers) 15%

Table 3: Example weighting criteria structure

17Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

5.1.2 Market engagement

Market engagement can be all-embracing and complex or relatively straightforward. It can take the form of a simple public advertisement informing the market of your aims, circulating a questionnaire or conducting detailed discussions with suppliers to develop a solution together. The suppliers you choose to engage could be informed by information gathered on current suppliers in the area from your baselining exercise, your own previous knowledge or some simple further research into companies active in the area.

One approach is to organise a day where the suppliers can come and listen to your plans for the procurement and test some of the ideas for the service. This will enable you to:

• ‘sound’ the market and gauge interest;• assist interest by explaining the options and rationale for establishing the service;• provide interested parties with an opportunity to understand the requirements and input

into the structure of the documents; and• offer suppliers the opportunity to meet up and develop relationships with other

organisations.

The day can include a presentation by representatives of your group explaining the process and requirements of the exercise. This can be followed by one-to-one sessions with potential suppliers for a detailed discussion of the proposed service.

The results and feedback from your engagement exercise can then be fed into the final development of your ITT documents before you launch your tender.

5.1.3 Launch

Once you are satisfied with all your ITT documents, you can launch your tender process by issuing specific invitations to trade-waste contractors you are keen to receive responses from. Once again, your group may not be bound to adhere to the public procurement regulations, but in the interest of making sure all interested suppliers have a fair chance to submit a tender for the services, you might consider making a public announcement of the procurement exercise (e.g. in the local press).

With your launch communications, you should re-iterate the timetable deadlines for potential suppliers to submit any clarification questions and their final response.

If any clarification questions are received, your answers should be circulated to all the suppliers you have invited to tender. This ensures that no potential bidder has an unfair advantage over another.

Preferred supplier procurement

Key actions for your plan:

• agree on priorities for waste services in the area;• identify which suppliers to invite to tender;• develop ITT documents;• conduct market engagement exercise;• finalise ITT documents;• launch ITT;• issue clarification questions to bidders;• conduct individual evaluations of submitted responses;• hold evaluator consensus meeting;• notify suppliers of evaluation results; and• hold final discussions with successful bidder.

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5.1.4 Evaluation

After the final submission deadline has passed, you are ready to begin evaluation. It is good practice to have at least three evaluators in your team, so that the submissions can be fairly and thoroughly assessed and discussed. All the evaluators should have an initial read through the responses and a list of any questions for further clarification should be compiled. These questions can then be returned to the relevant supplier(s). A deadline for them to respond should be stated. This process should be purely for explanation of specific points. It is not an opportunity for a supplier to submit further information, as this might be construed as offering an unfair advantage.

Once you have received final clarifications, each evaluator in your team can assess the submissions according to the criteria you set out in the ITT. Scores are given for each criterion and the appropriate weightings applied. This gives an overall score for each bidder. You can then hold a consensus meeting involving all the individual evaluators to discuss any differences in your scoring decision and reach an overall decision on your preferred supplier.

5.1.5 Award

When you have reached your decision, you can let all bidders know the outcome of the process and invite your preferred supplier to a meeting to finalise the arrangements.

This meeting is where you can discuss the final form of the preferred supplier agreement, any joint marketing of the new service you wish to embark upon, and set dates for the commencement of the arrangement and initial monitoring/review meetings.

19Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

5.2 Co-operation between businessesDiscussions with individual businesses in your area and the findings from your baselining exercise may reveal opportunities for greater levels of co-operation between businesses and co-ordination of waste management practices.

Sometimes all it takes is an outside observer to spot simple measures that could benefit several neighbouring businesses. Acting individually, the businesses may never have been aware of the measures and wouldn’t have realised the benefits they provide.

5.2.1 Sharing waste infrastructure

As mentioned earlier, having lots of bins distributed along public streets can have a detrimental effect on the overall aesthetic appearance of an area. The development, over time, of our town and city centres very often happens without a strategic consideration of waste storage logistics. More and more towns throughout the UK and worldwide are introducing collection windows for business waste – meaning bins can only be presented on the street at certain times of the day.

Helping to identify options for more effective, unobtrusive storage of waste containers can be a huge benefit to the businesses your group represents. The first step in this process is to take a walk around the area, noting where bins are stored and identifying potential areas that could be used more effectively. This could be an area of waste ground or an area where some bins seem to be stored already that could be expanded or used by more businesses.

Implementing a shared storage space can be a complex and challenging project, and once you have identified your areas of interest there are several key questions you will need to address with important stakeholders. These include:

• the owner of the land in question: − are they willing to sell or lease the land?

› who will buy or rent it and ‘own’ the bin store? › can the individual businesses involved share the costs? › can a legal agreement be drafted?

− are there any restrictions on development?• the businesses who may be able to use the space:

− what impact will it have on their current practices? − what bins do they have – how big a space is required? − do they prefer to retain individual bins within the space or share actual bins?

• trade-waste contractors: − how will any changes affect their collection schedules and procedures?

• local authority departments such as waste, roads, estates and planning: − do your proposed changes need any specific permissions or requirements?

Answering these questions will help to inform a simple cost/benefit assessment exercise and map out the next steps to take. You may need to gather quotes for any preparatory work required, such as clearing and paving the proposed areas to be used or the erection of fencing to keep bin storage areas secure and avoid contamination by the public.

20Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

A bin storage space used communally by three Scottish city centre businesses.

If you are investigating options to change waste management practices or arrangements, you should always make sure the businesses involved can continue to adhere to the relevant environmental regulations.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) is Scotland’s environmental regulator. Its NetRegs tool provides free, up-to-date environmental regulation guidance to SMEs throughout Scotland.

TopTip

Sharing waste infrastructure

Key actions for your plan:

• walk-around the area to note the storage situation and potential areas for development;

• investigate ownership status;• engage with relevant businesses;• engage with relevant trade-waste contractors;• engage with relevant local authority departments; and• investigate physical work requirements and gather quotes if necessary

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5.2.2 Bulking of waste

Businesses operating near to each other and have waste streams with a similar composition may be able to work together to ‘bulk’ their waste when presenting it for collection. Investigating this option would include discussions with each of the relevant businesses about how they store and manage their waste, and gauge how they feel about co-operating with their neighbours.

Any resulting relationship would need to be appropriately arranged and managed to make sure all businesses involved continue to adhere to their Duty of Care responsibilities and the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012.

Businesses with similar waste streams may also have similar raw materials requirements and similar suppliers in their supply chain. Engaging with businesses and encouraging them to work together on improving waste management also provides an opportunity to determine if they use the same raw materials suppliers. If they do, investigate if they could arrange to co-ordinate deliveries to further facilitate the smooth joint management of associated wastes. This supplier engagement can be made even more valuable if it is combined with discussions with trade-waste contractors to co-ordinate deliveries with waste collections to minimise the amount of time any potential packaging waste needs to be stored by the businesses.

Identifying and engaging with key suppliers is also an opportunity for individual businesses to investigate any opportunities for supplier packaging takeback schemes. Suppliers may be able to use returnable packaging, such as crates or pallets, to reduce the amount of waste the business needs to deal with.

They may be able to negotiate deals with suppliers to use more recyclable packaging or simply less packaging where possible.

TopTip

Bulking of waste

Key actions for your plan:

• identify neighbouring businesses with similar waste streams;• engage with businesses and encourage bulking where possible;• ensure arrangements comply with duty of care responsibilities and the Waste

(Scotland) Regulations 2012; and• work with businesses to engage with suppliers and/or trade waste contractors to

investigate delivery co-ordination options.

22Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

5.2.3 Materials exchange between businesses

Depending on the range and nature of businesses represented in your group, there may be opportunities to arrange for exchange of materials between businesses. This could prevent usable materials from going to waste and, consequently, reduce the producing business’s waste costs.

Opportunities may include:

• furniture that is suitable for use without any repairs;• office equipment and stationery;• surplus items on construction sites that are suitable for use elsewhere;• pallets and other packaging materials appropriate for re-use; and• surplus food that could be redistributed.

You could encourage materials exchange at a local level by letting businesses use your existing communication channels, such as newsletters and emails, to advertise any surplus materials or materials that are no longer needed.

Materials exchange

Key actions for your plan:

• identify businesses with surplus materials;• Identify businesses that may be able to use those materials;• investigate regulatory considerations via SEPA’s guidance; and• make the appropriate introductions between businesses to facilitate exchange.

Surplus food redistribution

Redistributing surplus food – whether it arises via damage to packaging, slow-moving stock lines or simply being left over after service times – is becoming a more and more common practice for businesses across the world.

There are several online services that can help businesses assess what food could be saved from becoming waste and match them with other local businesses, charities or individuals who can give it a good home.

As a business group, you can encourage and support your businesses to investigate these options or put some time into making connections between your local businesses yourself, following the action plan steps above.

Further guidance on the practicalities of distributing surplus food, links to online redistribution organisations and templates to help set up your own arrangements are available from Resource Efficient Scotland here:

Surplus food redistribution

Please note – legislation in Scotland reduces the exchange and re-use of materials to those that are either products or materials that have an ‘end-of-waste’ criteria. As such, it is important to ensure regulatory compliance by not encouraging the ‘exchange’ of materials that are classed as waste, unless the appropriate regulatory requirements or exemptions are in place. Further information on ‘end-of-waste’ criteria and associated regulations can be found in SEPA’s guidance document Reuse Activities and Waste Regulation.

23Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

6. Monitoring and evaluation

To assess the impact of the improvements you have introduced and developed for the businesses in your group, you should decide on the regularity and type of information you want to monitor. This could take several different forms:

• an annual repeat of the full survey used in your baselining exercise to build an ongoing complete picture of waste management data across the area;

• recording and analysing data reported by an approved, preferred trade-waste contractor; and

• focused data collection and analysis from businesses involved with specific improvement projects.

The exact information you will want to monitor will vary depending on the particular projects you have taken on, but could include:

• changes in waste stream configuration across businesses;• evidence of higher levels of compliance with the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012;• changes in overall waste arisings;• changes in recycling rates;• changes in waste management costs to businesses; and• qualitative information on changes to street scene and the environment in general.

Collecting this information will allow you to further develop certain projects or opportunities if you feel there is still room for improvement, and to share your success stories with businesses within your group and across other similar organisations.

Effectively assessing and sharing your experiences of identifying, delivering and monitoring waste management improvement opportunities is the best way of encouraging other groups across the country to do the same.

24Improving waste management - a guide for business groups

7. List of tools and templates

Developing a baseline

Survey sheet

Baseline spreadsheet

Plan to succeed

Group action plan template

Pinpointing individual business opportunities

Waste prevention plan template;

Save money on waste – Advice and support for organisations in Scotland;

Raw materials and waste tracking spreadsheet;

How to reduce food waste in the hospitality and food service sector;

How to reduce food waste in manufacturing;

Surplus food redistribution guide and supporting resources

Create your own signage and posters

Preferred supplier procurement

Invitation to tender documents

Market engagement slides

Pricing schedule

Stage 1 evaluation spreadsheet;

Stage 2 scoring spreadsheet;

Preferred supplier agreement – Capital Law

Procurement decision letters

This guide and its associated new tools and templates have been developed by Ricardo Energy and Environment on behalf of Resource Efficient Scotland, apart from the draft preferred supplier agreement, which was developed by Capital Law.

Resource Efficient Scotland offers all small and medium businesses help to not only reduce waste, but cut energy and water usage too.

We’re here to help.Call us on 0808 808 2269

Email enquiries@resourceefficientscotland.com

Visit www.resourceefficientscotland.com