Whether it’s expired supermarket food or metal filings on a factory floor, business waste can result in huge costs both to the environment and your company’s profits. Here are a few ways in which you can reduce your business’s waste, saving money and saving the planet.

Keep a close eye on expiration dates

Stock that is about to expire such as food ingredients should be noted and used. Restaurants will often use a day dot system to note how long something has left before it expires and will create special daily offers in order to get these ingredients used up and sold. Food in packaging meanwhile will often come with an expiry date printed on it – by rotating stock you can ensure that the food that is about to expire first is used first. Other items that can expire include medication, camera film, cosmetics, paints and dyes.

Get recycling

There are many recycling companies that will pay to take away your waste. Scrap metal yards will often pay for getting rid of excess construction materials and old metal furniture. There are many companies meanwhile that recycle electronic parts for cash, selling them onto computer repair companies and other tech businesses. It’s even possible to sell many things on gumtree from half used cans of paint to old desks.

Train employees to reduce waste

Employee mistakes can sometimes lead to waste. This could include mishearing someone’s order at a restaurant and preparing the wrong meal, or printing off leaflets for a client only to find that there’s an error on the leaflet and that they need to be reprinted. Having screening systems in place can reduce errors – this could involve encouraging waiting staff to read back orders to customers or having something checked by a peer. In other cases, measures and quotas may need to be introduced to prevent employees using up supplies (for example, some offices have a paper and ink quota that prevents people printing off unnecessary documents).

Improve stock control

Ordering too many supplies can also lead to waste if it’s then impossible to use those items before their expiry date. You can sell on these supplies in some cases, but in most cases it’s better to improve stock control so that you haven’t got this surplus inventory to begin with. Modern logistic software can help to identify trends in sales and see which items get sold and which don’t so that you’re not left with lots of extra stock.

Minimize waste with machinery

Certain modern machinery may be able to trim waste entirely. Going paperless and relying wholly on sending information via computers could help to cut out paper and ink costs. In other cases, machinery may be fine-tuned to eliminate waste, such as an industrial machine that requires minimal oil.