If you're an environmentally conscious person, you may want to encourage recycling at an office, production facility or warehouse that you own or manage, and help your staff reduce consumer waste as much as possible. Businesses often produce a tremendous amount of rubbish, so encouraging your employees to recycle and reduce waste means keeping materials out of landfills and reducing your costs for trash collection! If you're looking to encourage your own employees to recycle and reduce everyday consumer waste while at work, note a few simple tips to keep in mind.

Get a water cooler

A water cooler can reduce the number of plastic water bottles your employees use every day; if there is fresh, cool water readily available to employees, they can use one bottle or cup repeatedly rather than buying bottled water. Have more than one water cooler around the office so that it's always readily available and easily accessible to employees.

Reward the employees

Consider how you might reward employees for recycling; as an example, you might have a bin in the lunchroom for collecting soda cans and plastic soda bottles. Provide a pizza lunch when those bins get full; this encourages employees to use those bins rather than tossing their soda containers in the rubbish. Have a contest where employees share their tips for recycling and reducing waste, and give a prize to the employee with the most ideas or best tips. You might also have a list of ways that employees can recycle and reduce waste at home and on the job, and have a contest where each employee makes a resolution to use as many tips as possible; the employee who does the best job each month in recycling and reducing waste gets a prize!

Know what can be recycled

Very often employees on the job fail to recycle because they don't know what can actually be collected by a recycling company; in turn, they might toss out certain plastic items, ink cartridges, old computers and printers, and the like. Check with the recycling company you will use and note if they take all forms of plastic, metal shavings, wood scraps, and electronics, or what is commonly called ewaste recycling. 

Make up signs and posters for your employees, listing all the items they can recycle, and be sure you have appropriate recycling bins around the office or other areas. This will ensure these items are easily collected in one spot, encouraging employees to use those bins rather than tossing items in the rubbish.