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How to choose the right trash can for your business
Concrete Outdoor Trash Cans
Choosing the Right Indoor Trash Cans for your Business
Indoor trash cans are more than trash receptacles. They add to your overall office decor theme, so it’s important to keep an eye on your design ascetics to create a cohesive overall look. Identify where your biggest trash can needs are throughout the office. Ideal locations include larger communal trash cans in the break room and kitchen, individual trash cans for each office, and meeting room trash cans.
Consider smell reducing designs, such as trash cans that have lids with dome tops or other ways of mitigating smells, for trash cans that get a large amount of food waste. The trash cans at the desks get paper waste, snack wrappers, and other generally smell-free objects so it’s less of an issue here. Once you have your garbage cans set up, make sure your janitorial staff empties them on a regular basis so employees are encouraged to keep up on their cleanliness.
Choosing the Right Outdoor Trash Cans for your Business
Your focus for outdoor trash cans is more on utility than appearance, although you still want your trash cans to promote your overall business look and theme. Put trash cans by any entrances and exits, especially if you have customers coming into a storefront business. When you encourage customers to dump their trash from a food court or another business before coming into your store, you don’t worry about trash strewn around that may not get discovered until much later.
Outdoor ashtrays are another necessary component to your overall commercial trash can needs, as there’s nothing that gives more of a negative impression than your front door surrounded by cigarette butts. Focus on more durable materials for your outside trash receptacles so they stand up to high use and the elements.
FollowRecycle Right: Choose the Proper Can for Your Office
Steel Recycle Bins
Recycle with the Perfect Recycling Trash Can
300 to 400 tons of trash are dumped daily on the once bucolic island of Thilafushi in the Maldives, transforming it into a toxic wasteland. Moscow, Naples, and the state of New Jersey are plagued by chronic landfill overflow problems, inciting political debate and international press coverage. In Los Angeles, two Material Recycling Facilities, or MRFs, have experienced an overnight spike in volume from 200 tons a day each to a combined 10,000 after the closure of America’s largest landfill, which received a staggering 12,000 tons of waste a day, or half of Los Angeles County’s daily trash production. Many American landfills will reach capacity within the next five years, and operators are resorting to incineration, which is considered hazardous because of toxic air pollution. On this front, the EPA is conducting a study on dioxin emissions to determine if this practice is safe or would cause long term health devastation to local communities like the Seveso disaster. Recycling is universally touted as the most immediate solution to the global landfill crisis. Recycling trash cans can help in getting you started.
Even if your office has never recycled before, it only takes a few simple steps to start. First, identify local facilities or municipal collection programs that will accept materials. If quick Googling doesn’t help, many MRFs are listed in regional online databases such as these. Any local or regional MRF or waste management provider could be helpful in directing you to your nearest facility or hauling service. Second, choose the perfect office recycling bins to do the job. Lastly, start your recycling campaign at the office. For specialty needs like e-waste, business to business arrangements may also be suitable as several large U.S. based electronics manufacturers have committed to recycling divisions.
How to Minimize Waste at Work
Based on collection availability in your area, match with the items your office tends to produce. Every office where people eat lunch and have snack breaks will produce some blue category recyclables such as glass and plastic bottles. Maybe your office also produces a large volume of e-waste, scrap metal, plastic bags, construction materials or biodegradable materials. These different categories of items typically do not go to the same facility, so multiple bins or sectioned cans with separate liners are required for collection.
Encourage recycling in the work place by selecting the proper public recycle bin for your needs. An office producing large amounts of recyclable paper may want to shirk desk trash cans for small recycling wastebaskets and place a community waste receptacle for trash. Any office can encourage paper recycling by placing a can near a shared printer or copier. A recycling can in decorative gloss chrome or metallic silver reminds workers where to place aluminum, scrap metal, or e-waste. Covered bins can reduce the odor problem associated with biodegradable material. If your office produces multiple categories of recyclables or employees are confused by the recycling initiative, office recycling bins are available that are compartmentalized, labelled, and custom colored to collect multiple types of materials and remind employees of a can’s designated purpose.
Trash Cans Unlimited offers an array of designer receptacles to meet any recycling need.
Choosing the right trash receptacle for your office
Garbage Cans for the Office
Choose the Right Trash Can for Your Office Space
Offices have spaces with various functions – desks for working, conference rooms for meeting, and lunchrooms for eating. Just like every space is designed for its intended function, there are a variety of different kinds of trash receptacles for all areas of your office. Your trash says a lot about your office – make sure your indoor and outdoor garbage cans are creating the right message.
Benefits of Proper Disposal
Ensuring employees and customers have the right options for trash and recycling disposal can help your business in many ways:
- recycling bins promote green corporate culture
- tidy desks free of trash increase productivity
- neat floors and surfaces show attention to detail
- good hygiene improves the health and safety of employees and customers
- covered trash cans reduce unwanted food smells
Finding the Right Trash Can
Your office should have the right trash can for every area of the building. Outdoor trash cans allow people to dispose of unwanted items before entering your building, which reduces the amount of litter both outside and inside your building. Depending on your company’s needs, outdoor trash options could include garbage cans, smokers receptacles, or recycling bins.
When choosing indoor trash cans, smaller decorative options can add to the overall design of your office, which serving as a place to get rid of trash. Small under desk trash cans can help your employees keep their space clean and orderly, without having to interrupt their work with a walk to a far away garbage can. Keep in mind that smaller trash cans should be emptied more often to reduce overflows.
Trash cans for office kitchens, lunchrooms, or break rooms should have a lid to avoid unwanted food smells from traveling through the office. Lids will also cover any unsightly food wastes that could attract insects and give your office a messy or unkempt appearance.
Surprisingly, more trash cans doesn’t always mean less litter, so be sure to find the right balance to meet the needs of your office. A few strategically placed garbage receptacles will reduce litter more than several haphazardly placed options.
Types of Garbage Cans
Trash receptacles come in all shapes and sizes and can be made from:
- metal
- steel
- stainless steel
- plastic
- natural materials
Choosing the right material will ensure your office trash can is durable enough for its location and type of trash, and can also make a difference when it comes to cleaning or other maintenance.
Are you using the right trash cans for your commercial building?
Stainless Steel Commercial Trash Cans
Use the Right Commercial Trash Cans
Disposal receptacles can say a lot about your business. The availability of recycle bins might promote a green corporate culture. Fewer trash cans can help cut down on litter. The addition of covered ashtrays may reduce the number of cigarette butts cluttering up a store front. The type, number and style of commercial trash cans can help promote the brand associated with your company, and improve the perceived reliability of your services/products.
Offer Receptacles for All Types of Trash
Cutting down on litter creates a more welcoming atmosphere, and that starts with offering the right combination of trash receptacles. Outdoor trash cans help catch items people do not want to carry inside, like an empty drink or food container. Of course, it is always a good idea to offer two different options, one for trash and one for recyclables. Smokers receptacles offer an approved depository for butts that would otherwise cover the ground. For non and recovering smokers, nothing is more off putting than discarded butts. Inside the building, discretion is the better part of valor. Small, unobtrusive and decorative cans can be used to help create a pleasant visual. Make sure they are emptied frequently to avoid any overflows, and visitors will respond more positively to the cleaner atmosphere.
Prepare for the ‘Pay as you Throw’ Model
Technology now allows trash companies to track the amount of garbage produced by your company. RFID tags embedded in your trash cans can actually measure trash disposal by weight. That could spell some changes to the way disposal companies handle removal charges. Ramp up the recycling to help prepare for potential changes. Google has paved the way with a new program in their London office that removes individual trash cans. No more waste baskets at individual desks. Instead, employees all go to a central disposal location for trash. As a result, they have seen a 50 percent increase in recycling.
Bigger Isn’t Always Better
As more cities cut down on trash collection services, the temptation is to replace existing trash cans with larger alternatives. Before making that decision, take a serious look at your trash production. Would more aggressive recycling reduce your trash collection needs? If so, think about implementing alternatives that promote a cleaner approach to trash. Your trash cans are your direction to employees. Make sure they say the right things and encourage the right behaviors. TrashcansUnlimited.com can help.
Resources:
http://commercialobserver.com/2014/01/fewer-trash-cans-less-litter-mta/
http://www.mnn.com/money/sustainable-business-practices/blogs/no-trash-cans-for-google-employees
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/pure-genius/trash-collection-goes-high-tech-to-promote-recycling/
http://home.ieis.tue.nl/ydkort/0013916507311035v1.pdf
