Recycling

So how can marketers take advantage of this? As mentioned above, shoppers are now more concerned about the planet and their carbon footprint. There is a growing number of people who are making an active effort to reduce waste. However, many of these people are not yet fully aware of how they can reduce waste and recycle as effectively as possible. There’s the general public for whom recycling isn’t entirely second nature yet and then there’s groups such as millennials for whom the topic is so alien that in 2015, General Motors stated that it was ‘not confident about the future of millennials.’. Although recycling practice varies regionally, every local authority has a responsibility to reduce the waste sent to landfill. They provide free bulky uplifts and, more recently, kerbside collections for garden/building waste. And local authorities are becoming more proactive about providing these services: in 2018 Manchester City Council ran a weight loss competition for its residents that rewarded those who cut their rubbish into landfill by encouraging them to switch from their weekly collection service to a pay-as-you-throw scheme.As a member of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM), and also as an enthusiastic recycler, this uses in Waste Management really caught my eye. At first glance, we have been given the responsibility of recycling by law but what I find hard to comprehend is how many businesses are still unaware of the benefits that recycling can provide them with. However, it is not just government regulations that are driving us to improve our waste management; it is also down to consumer awareness.So we’re doing something right, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. A recent report from Wrap (the government body that champions recycling and waste reduction) shows that better communication about how and where to dispose of materials after their original packaging has been disposed of is sorely needed. This provides a real opportunity for small businesses to get involved.

Reduction

I found this a good practice rather than doing the opposite, i.e. sending newspapers to the guests, which is very wasteful and a wrong approach, because currently there are no recycling systems for paper used in hotels. You may argue that recycling systems are being installed in some countries but it took more than ten years after the concept had been developed.Once they stopped automatically delivering and picked up the newspapers on a daily basis, they realized a 50% reduction in volume going through their system. Their cost per newspaper went down from 71 cents to 35 cents, and they made an additional 6 cents per newspaper thanks to advertising revenue. That’s 51% ahead on costs.The effectiveness of the scheme was proved when, following the introduction of the policy, by 2010 this had led to an overall 30% reduction in newsprint usage , a saving of $1 million. The chain estimates that if each of its 6,500 hotels around the world followed suit, it could save a projected $50 million annually.