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NEW! for business and industry: Resource Efficiency Tool Kit Walk your business through this comprehensive questionaire that provides information and resources as you go!  Save money on energy, water and waste expenses.

Business Waste Prevention

When it comes to conserving resources, preventing pollution and saving money, reducing waste trumps recycling. In this game, businesses and organizations of all sizes can truly do well by doing the right thing. View  Case Studies   with industry-specific fact sheets and hundreds of examples how to use less and save money. And even more case studies showing real $$avings

Reduce your use of office paper    

Copy paper, like the kind used in photocopiers, computer printers and plain-paper fax machines, is the most common type of office waste paper.    Try this online Paper Calculator

• The U.S. EPA estimates that paper and paperboard account for almost 40 percent of our garbage.
• Office paper is highly recyclable, but a lot gets wasted. Waste reduction is more cost-effective than recycling because it reduces the amount of material that needs to be collected, transported and processed. Waste reduction can save money for businesses and institutions of any size.
• Nearly 3.7 million tons of copy paper are used annually in the United States alone. That's over 700 trillion sheets.

Benefits of using less

Storage and handling. Paper is bulky to store, in boxes or in file cabinets. By using fewer sheets, you can put storage space to more productive use.

Mailing costs. Fewer sheets mailed may mean reduced postage. A single-sided 10-page letter costs $0.60 to mail; that same letter, copied onto both sides of the paper, uses only five sheets and requires only $0.37 in postage. The price of postage is rising, and those extra ounces can really add up.

Environmental benefits. By increasing double-sided copying (duplexing), U.S. offices could reduce annual paper use by 20 percent (Inform, Inc). By using and discarding less paper, you are conserving resources, reducing water and energy use, and preventing pollution.

Tips for reducing paper use

• Try to use both sides of a sheet of paper for printing, copying, writing and drawing.
• Reuse paper that's already printed on one side by manually feeding it into copiers and printers. Use it for internal documents like drafts and short-lived items such as meeting agendas or temporary signs.
• Once-used paper can also be reused in plain paper fax machines — they only need one clean side.
• E-mail can be used to share documents and ideas. Be sure to only print the e-mails you need to have a hard copy of. This advice goes for Internet documents as well. Instead of printing a Web page, bookmark it or save the page on your hard drive and pull it up when needed.
• Desktop fax, electronic references (CD-ROM databases), electronic data storage, electronic purchasing and direct deposit are all ways to use electronic media that reduce office paper waste.
• Help minimize misprints by posting a diagram on how to load special paper like letterhead so it will be printed correctly.
• Practice efficient copying — use the size reduction feature offered on many copiers. Two pages of a book or periodical can often be copied onto one standard sheet.
• Use two-way or send-and-return envelopes. Your outgoing envelope gets reused for its return trip.
• Use reusable inter- and intra-office envelopes.
• Reuse old paper for notepads. It can be cut to custom sizes and simply bound with a staple.
• Draft documents can be reviewed, edited and shared on-screen.

Building management tips

How a building is managed can affect environmental quality and employee health. There are several steps that building managers can take to reduce waste and protect the health of tenants and employees within a building.

• Use reusable dishware in your company's cafeteria and kitchen instead of disposables.
• Use cloth towel roll dispensers in your bathrooms and cloth napkins and towels in your kitchens.
• Where available, separate your building's organic wastes from non-compostable trash and send it to a composting facility. This includes food wastes, waste from groundskeeping or gardening, and even soiled or unrecyclable paper products like paper towels and napkins.
• Work with janitorial service or staff to find ways to use less toxic, non-toxic cleaning products.

More Resources

Click here to access DEQ’s Commercial Waste Reduction Clearinghouse, which contains detailed waste prevention information for the following specific types of businesses:

Agriculture, Construction, Dry Cleaning, Food Service, Green Conference or Event, Grocery,  Health Care,  Hotels and Motels,  Institutions,  Landscaping,  Packaging,  Printing Industry,  Property Management and Realtors

http://www.deq.state.or.us/lq/sw/cwrc/strategies/index.htm