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The Business of Recycling – WRAP
Guidance for Retail and Wholesale
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Planning your Retail or Wholesale organisations recycling needs

Developing a Waste Action Plan for your Retail and Wholesale organisation

Estimated reading time: 2 min

Now that you’ve completed your waste audit, you’re ready to develop your Waste Action Plan. This will document what you want to achieve, how it will be done, by when, and who is responsible for each part of the plan. It also acts as a reference point to review your progress. Here’s what to include:

  • Work out which materials could be recycled and find a to recycle them.

  • Identify key materials and consider whether these can be eliminated – for example, by requesting that your suppliers use reusable or recyclable packaging in their supply of products, raw materials or ingredients. Make sure you’re also aware of your responsibilities for the upcoming packaging Extended Producer Responsibility Regulations.

  • Set SMART targets – Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Reasonable and Time-bound. For example, reduce the amount of paper you use by 50% before the end of the financial year by moving to paperless marketing methods and offering paper-free receipts that you can email to customers.

  • Include ‘quick wins’ to help encourage everybody to get involved and keep up their efforts.

  • Communicate the actions you’re taking by using our downloadable communications resources.

  • Encourage your employees to share their ideas to reduce, reuse and recycle each material.

  • Develop a system to review and improve your recycling processes, monitoring progress so that you can see where you’ve made improvements and what more can be done.

  • Don’t be afraid to change the plan if necessary – it’s better to have a live document rather than something that just gets filed away.

Good to know

For larger organisations, a more advanced option is to develop an Environmental Management System (EMS), which works in a similar way to other management systems, such as those that manage quality or safety. It assesses your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses, helps you identify and manage significant impacts, saves you money by increasing efficiency, ensures you comply with environmental legislation and provides benchmarks for improvements.