GO GREEN AND SAVE MONEY WITH BIZRECYCLING
Since January 2016, Minnesota state law has required businesses and organizations to recycle at least three types of materials – including, but not limited to: paper, plastic and aluminum. The Minnesota Legislature has adopted a 75 percent recycling goal.
As a business owner, you should ask yourself these questions: Does your business have a recycling program? Are you sure you’ re recycling all you can? or, Perhaps your business is interested in building a recycling or organics program, but you need help getting started?
When it comes to starting a successful recycling or organics program, it can be hard to get the ball rolling if you’ ve never done it before. The experts at Ramsey / Washington Recycling Energy Board can help teach you about what it takes to start a program and help you figure out what will work best for your business. If you’ re in need of financial aid, BizRecycling offers grants to help fund new programs and changes to improve old programs.
Vadnais Heights Economic Development Director Ling Becker says,“ The VHEDC is a proud partner of the BizRecycling program – an excellent incentive for businesses interested in saving money while also doing something to help the environment. Our local businesses have found the grant money is easy to access and covers a wide range of initiatives. Many are using the program as a way to start and engage‘ Green Teams’ among their employees and serve as a tool for employee engagement.”
Saving money is one of the top reasons businesses decide to recycle, despite some of the upfront challenges that go along with getting started. For most businesses, adopting better recycling habits can significantly cut costs in the long run. In Ramsey County, there’ s a 70 percent county and state tax on trash, but there’ s no tax on recycling or organics recycling, which means that there’ s a big opportunity to save money by putting less in the trash.
“ Going Green” can improve the overall efficiency of a business. For example, reducing unnecessary waste can trim operating costs. Printing less cuts down on paper usage, and can lower the budget spent on printing materials. Refilling ink cartridges instead of throwing them away is another money-saving practice, since it saves money on the purchase of
new cartridges, and it also reduces the amount of plastic thrown away from the cartridge and packaging.
Children’ s Discovery Academy( CDA), Vadnais Heights, saved approximately $ 6,300 and became compliant with the new state law by gaining efficiencies in business operations. Administrators at CDA contacted BizRecycling, then a representative from the Minnesota Waste Wise Foundation, which offers environmental sustainability consulting to Minnesota businesses and organizations, helped CDA identify some key challenges; it was found that CDA was using more than 15,000 disposable paper products a month, generating lots of waste.
Waste Wise worked with CDA to apply for a BizRecycling grant, which covered the cost of a new dishwasher
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