Why business waste is important to us all

1. Businesses in Great Britain produce some 80m tonnes of waste each year of which about 5m tonnes are hazardous. Even office workers produce significant amounts of waste. Although about a third of business waste is recycled, about half still goes to landfill.

2. This not only risks damage to our environment, but also represents a massive waste of natural resources which will sooner or later hold back economic growth and lower everyone’s quality of life.

3. This is why companies are increasingly being asked to bear the environmental costs of their waste management and why landfill taxes, for example, are currently rising at £1 per tonne per year.

4. But, quite apart from increased taxes, companies also often underestimate how much their waste costs them. They may not take into account the purchase cost of discarded raw materials, the value of any reject product, the cost of discarded packaging and the energy and other resources used to process materials that will be thrown away.

5. So reducing waste is better for the business bottom line too.

6. And forward-looking businesses can gain powerful competitive advantages by looking at their impact on the environment. They can develop new and more sustainable processes, new products and even completely new ways of doing business, which will support their business growth in the future.

The Waste Reporting Guidelines

7. The purpose of these Guidelines is to help businesses to:

• measure all the waste they produce which basically means all controlled waste and special or hazardous waste from industry (including solvents, oils, sludges and other liquid wastes) and waste from commercial premises, such as offices and retail outlets, which may be collected as municipal waste.
• set targets to reduce their waste or to re-use, recycle, recover or redirect their waste to the benefit of the company and the environment.
• achieve savings and improve both their performance and their competitiveness.
• report on their performance to demonstrate to shareholders, consumers and other stakeholders that theirs is a well-run, environmentally responsible business, and to build commitment within the business.
• meet current and future legislative requirements, for example, the requirements under the Duty of Care which apply to all commercial or industrial waste producers, or the European Packaging Directives requirements to recover 52% of packaging waste by 2001. Future legislation (for example on Producer Responsibility and Integrated Product Policy and the EC Landfill Directive) will make it ever more important for businesses to develop strategies for managing and reducing all kinds of waste.

8. These Guidelines have been prepared by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions in consultation with the National Assemblies for Wales and Scotland.

9. Separate Guidelines are available on Company Reporting on Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and we are preparing further Guidelines on water use – see Useful Information.

Thank You

Many experts from business, consultants and academics have helped us in developing these guidelines. Our special thanks go to:

Anglian Water, Asda, BAA, B & Q, Biffa Waste Services, Business Benefits Limited, British Airways, British Steel, Cable and Wireless, Chemical Industries Association, The Environment Agency, Environmental Resources Management, ETSU, The Food and Drink Federation, Green Alliance, Hawker, ICI, Marks and Spencer, Michelin, Motorola, NatWest, Onyx Total Waste Management, Pensions Investment Research Consultants, Powergen, Railtrack, Recycle UK, RMC, Safeway, J Sainsbury, Science and Technology Policy Research Unit (University of Sussex), Thames Water, TXU Europe Group, Vivendi, Wastebusters, UK Waste, UN Environment Programme, United Utilities.

How the Waste Reporting Guidelines Work

10. These Guidelines describe the basic steps a business can take to measure, manage and report on the impact of its waste emissions on the environment. Some companies, of course, are already producing comprehensive environmental reports and are likely to have progressed well beyond these basic steps. But they will want to check their practice against the Guidelines and might find it helpful to look in particular at the ideas for further development under Step 8 – Repeat the Cycle.

11. For those newly embarking on reporting, we have included case studies on the right hand side of each page showing the benefits that can be achieved. Details of further guidance and information available are listed under Useful Information.

12. We have developed these Guidelines primarily for use in preparing company environmental reports. However, we believe businesses could also use them to:

• measure environmental impacts as part of their ISO 14001 Environmental Management System or
• prepare reports on environmental impacts under EMAS (the EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) and/or
• help identify savings from reducing their waste emissions as part of the process of “Making a Corporate Commitment”

Details of where to find information on all these schemes are included in the Useful Information section.

Please send your response by 24 April 2000 via email to: tom.coles@defra.gsi.gov.uk or by post to EBC1, DETR, Ashdown House, Victoria Street, London SW1E 6DE.

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• Environmental Reporting: Guidelines for Company Reporting on Waste (Adobe Acrobat - 267kb)
• Environmental Reporting: Guidelines for Company Reporting on Waste (Rich Text - 205kb)