Article on Minimising Waste
With ever-increasing populations, it is vitally important that both businesses and individuals are aware of their impact upon the environment, as a failure to reduce the amount of waste, as well as the disposal method of such waste, will have an impact on the local environment, affecting nearby plant, animal and human life.
To minimise waste, the first question to ask is whether the material needs to be used/created at all. A prime example of this is emails which a person may normally print onto paper without thinking. If not needed to be printed out, keeping the message in purely electronic format will reduce paper needed. If every business did this, the cumulative effects would be immense. If a document does need to be printed, a few extra moments checking to make sure all the settings are correct before hitting the print button will help to reduce printing out the document wrongly (e.g. in black and white instead of colour, or portrait orientation instead of landscape), and have to throw it in the rubbish bin and re-print.
Recycling has become much more prominent in the last decade or too, and along with prevention talked about in the above paragraph, is the other great way of reducing and minimising waste production. Re-using material that is no longer required allows new products to be created without having to use up brand new raw materials, and obtaining them in the first place such as cutting down trees to make paper.
Environmental considerations have become so important, especially with the introduction of environmental legislation in recent years to help tackle problems such as pollution, mean that more and more businesses are looking for workers with environmental qualifications. The NEBOSH Environmental qualification is one of the most popular Environmental qualifications available, covering a variety of issues and topics including environmental management systems, pollution control, energy efficiency and environmental emergencies.
