A step-by-step guide to creating a waste reduction plan
Monday 2nd June 2025
All businesses like the idea of reducing waste. But not all put in the time and planning to make it a strategic priority. However, with regulations changing, environmental awareness increasing and business overheads rising, it’s never been more important to have a robust and considered waste reduction plan.
Whether you work in hospitality or construction; retail or manufacturing, creating a waste reduction plan needs to be a non-negotiable.
If your business doesn’t currently have one in place, here’s a guide to get you on the right track to better rubbish management.
Understand your waste streams
The first step towards reducing waste is to understand exactly what you are dealing with. This involves a straightforward audit of all waste produced by your business. This involves:
- Reviewing purchasing records to identify the type and volume of materials coming into the business that ultimately leaves as waste (packaging is an obvious and common example)
- Inspecting contributions to bins and skips and categorise waste into the relevant types – such as food, packaging, hazardous, clinical or confidential. It’s a rubbish job but an important one.
- Measuring volumes of waste to gain an idea of the scale of the waste your business generates as a benchmark.
Auditing waste streams is a team effort and should be done by engaging with teams to ensure that all waste generated by different company departments is accounted for.
Set clear goals
With an audit complete, the next step is to define specific waste reduction goals – such as reducing packaging waste by 25% in 12 months or increasing the volume of waste that is recycled rather than sent to landfill.
It goes without saying that any goals you set as an organisation should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
Develop a Waste Action Plan
With your organisation’s goals in place, it’s now time to plan out how you will achieve them. Any action plan should be focused around:
- Reduction strategies
- Reuse initiatives
- Recycling improvements
- Collaboration with suppliers to minimise consumption
Train and engage staff
Planning and strategising is all very well. But to implement change an organisation needs to bring employees on board. An informed and motivated workforce will be integral to achieving everyday improvements, so put time aside for:
- Providing clear instructions for waste sorting and recycling
- Ongoing training as part of professional development
- Reporting back on progress to share successes
Measure, monitor and make progress
Like anything in business, waste reduction is a process. It is important to measure ongoing progress against your goals in order to gauge success but also identify where improvements or changes need to be made. Introduce regular tracking of:
- Waste volumes
- Recycling volumes
- Disposal costs
- Employee feedback
- Supply chain feedback
Reducing waste isn’t just about ticking compliance boxes; it’s about doing the right thing for the environment and saving costs.
